Natalya Malone remembers the vigil for her 15-year-old son. The night after Deontae was slain in 2011, friends and family showed up at 65th and Mozart streets in the Marquette Park neighborhood to pray for peace.
So did Andrew Holmes, a prominent anti-violence activist and future village of Dolton trustee who has approached families at crime scenes for years, often briefing reporters and offering financial rewards for finding the killers. At Deontae’s vigil, Holmes “just popped up” and asked questions about her son, Malone recalled.
“After that, he disappeared,” Malone said. “He never came around.”
For more than a decade, Holmes has become so well-known for anti-violence work that former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel once declared an “Andrew Holmes Day.” TV host Steve Harvey hailed him as a champion of crime victims and former FBI Director James Comey honored Holmes with a national award for community leadership.
But behind the scenes, Malone and some other community members say his actions left them feeling revictimized and exploited as he raised his own profile without delivering the help he promised. Their frustration offers insight into the complex world of community activists who work to support families victimized by violence, often inserting themselves into someone else’s trauma and engaging with journalists with little oversight or accountability for their conduct.
“He was more a person who wanted to be in front of the camera,” said Naikeeia Williams, whose daughter was killed in 2017 and who also encountered Holmes amid her tragedy. “Whenever there was a photo opportunity, he was there.”
Now a lawsuit brought by a survivor of sex trafficking is alleging something more serious: that Holmes abused his power to sexually assault her when she was 16 years old and still recovering from her experience. Asha Gant, now 27 and a mother of three, chose to be publicly identified in this story.
In an interview, Gant said she came forward with her allegation after hearing that a Dolton village employee had accused Holmes of sexual assault while on a 2023 work trip to Las Vegas. Records show Las Vegas police investigated the incident, but prosecutors did not charge Holmes and he has denied wrongdoing.
Chicago Survivors, a group Holmes worked with, fired him amid the allegations. A lawsuit filed by the employee against Holmes and the village of Dolton is pending.
Gant’s lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court in January, alleges that Holmes remained in contact with Gant after helping rescue her from sex trafficking and that in April 2015 he came to her grandmother’s South Side home “under the auspices of checking on (her) well-being.”
The suit alleges Holmes took the girl for a car ride on Lake Shore Drive and asked her “general questions about her past,” including whether she “missed working the street.”
Holmes offered the girl marijuana, which she took, and he “indicated with his body language” that he wanted her “to perform oral sex,” according to the lawsuit. Holmes then took the girl to the now-closed Diplomat Motel and “proceeded to … rape” Gant, the suit states.
Asked about Gant’s lawsuit, Holmes said: “I don’t respond to any pending false allegations.”
He also defended himself against families’ criticism of his actions at crime scenes.
“I don’t know why they felt that way, but there was never anything done to build me up or do anything,” Holmes said in a brief telephone conversation. “Anything I did was to help families get help, get therapy, put families back in school and get families back together.”
Holmes said he would ask an attorney to answer further questions from the Tribune but did not say who was representing him. He did not respond to further questions.
‘It takes a toll’
In addition to his victim advocacy work, Holmes has appeared hundreds of times in stories about gun violence and offered commentary in TV news segments. He has the lived experience to speak authentically about these issues, as his 32-year-old daughter was fatally shot at an Indianapolis gas station in 2015.
“It takes a toll on you. That’s how I see it,” Holmes told reporters at the time. “Takes tolls on other families, but it hits home and hits home right about now real deep because that was my baby they took.”
Holmes’ service to area communities has included delivering 200 bags of food to seniors, distributing 1,500 Easter baskets to kids and 2,000 gun locks at the same event, throwing birthday parties to honor centenarians and, on one occasion, sleeping outside in the cold to bring awareness to homelessness.
Emanuel, a former Chicago mayor, celebrated Holmes in 2014 as a “community leader.”
“To have the safety you need in a neighborhood, you gotta live by a moral code, not a code of silence, and I’m gonna highlight Andrew Holmes because he has stepped forward and said, ‘I have a moral code, I have a moral responsibility,’” Emanuel said.
Hazel Crest police Chief Mitchell Davis previously told the Tribune that Holmes’ efforts on the street have helped law enforcement. “I do know that witnesses and people with information have come forward as a result of his efforts to help solve cases,” Davis said in 2020.
Several people who worked with Holmes told the Tribune he was known to use a police scanner to track criminal activity and respond to incidents. At crime scenes, he sometimes wore a lanyard around his neck or clothing with star paraphernalia.
“No one would stop him,” one of his former co-workers told the Tribune. “People thought he was the police.”
Holmes told the Tribune he has never impersonated a police officer. “The only badge I had around my neck was my ID badge as a crisis responder, not a police badge,” he said.
News coverage of the high-profile accidental death of Kenneka Jenkins, the teen found dead inside a hotel freezer in Rosemont in 2017, featured Holmes carrying a folder emblazoned with a logo resembling that of the FBI.
In 2020, when a hit-and-run driver injured Holmes’ sister, he touted his detective skills to the media when a tip he received led to an arrest. Holmes also famously called the police on his brother to accuse him of stealing packages, then talked with a TV reporter about it, saying he wanted to encourage Chicagoans to turn in family members who commit crimes.
Beyond his frequent media appearances, less is publicly known about Holmes’ background.
Holmes, 65, was employed by the CTA from 1998 to 2024, working as a rail janitor for at least 20 years, according to his personnel file. He earned a commendation certificate for “quick actions that helped save a passenger’s life” in 2001. Holmes now works for the U.S. Postal Service, the agency told the Tribune.
In an old resume obtained by the Tribune from the CTA, Holmes wrote that he had worked as an entrepreneur and entertainer with “Holmes Entertainment Center” since 1989, performing at various parties, festivals and locations including an American Legion Post and a Boys & Girls Club.
He also has worked for former Chicago Ald. Terry Peterson and Ald. Latasha Thomas. In 2019, he was elected a trustee in Dolton, and he ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Dolton in 2021. He also founded the nonprofit Andrew Holmes Foundation, with a mission of “providing victims of traumatic events support.”
Holmes has had a long professional relationship with Cook County Commissioner Sean Morrison, a southwest suburban Republican who also served as chair of the county GOP for nine years before resigning that position in April.
The two have offered joint rewards in cases, with Morrison putting up $15,000 when Holmes’ daughter was killed. Gant’s lawsuit alleges that she was rescued in 2014 by a task force of Morrison’s “actual or apparent” employees, including Holmes.
Morrison told the Tribune he provided funding for some of Holmes’ activism and a phone hotline, as well as donating laptops.
He said Holmes also worked briefly for a company he co-owned, Morrison Investigations, but Holmes and a private investigator did rescue operations like Gant’s through a separate nonprofit they created, Operation Restoring Innocence, for which Morrison sat on the board.
“We did work supporting him,” Morrison said. “I supported him as a friend.”
‘He literally left me there’
Some of Holmes’ former co-workers at Chicago Survivors told the Tribune he has drawn criticism from people who felt he overstepped his role in the challenging world of violence interrupters and victim advocates, such as by going on TV to discuss the crime without the family’s consent or pressing families to accept support services.
One said Holmes sometimes inserted himself into high-profile cases, then failed to follow through after the media spotlight moved on — echoing complaints the Tribune heard from some families.
Deidra Misters, whose 7-year-old son Akeem was killed in 2022, remembered arriving at the hospital covered in her son’s blood after he was fatally wounded.
Holmes came into the room and said he was sorry.
“He left, said he would come back,” Misters recalled. “He never came back.”
After Misters’ son died, she went to the police station to ask for help getting housing because she didn’t feel safe going home that night. An officer asked if she and Holmes had talked about finding a safe haven. They hadn’t. The officer said he would call Holmes, and later someone from Chicago Survivors reached out to get her a hotel room, Misters told the Tribune.
Williams said Holmes showed up but did not offer support services when she lost her 11-year-old daughter, Takiya Holmes, in 2017. Her minivan was caught in a crossfire of gunshots, and days later Takiya died in her arms. Andrew Holmes told reporters he was a cousin of Takiya’s, but Williams told the Tribune she did not know him.
Williams was also upset when, she said, Holmes invited TV cameras to her daughter’s funeral against her wishes. “I felt violated,” she said. “I didn’t have a lot of rules or nothing, I just asked for no cameras. I just wanted a little privacy.”
In the brief conversation with the Tribune, Holmes said he did not bring in the cameras.
Chicago mom Sharita Galloway said she had a bad experience with Holmes after her son was fatally shot in 2016, two days before his 17th birthday. Holmes persuaded her to meet him in the neighborhood where her son was slain, even though she was frightened for her safety, she said.
Galloway said they met at Lake Street and Central Avenue only for Holmes to leave her to respond to a new homicide. “Andrew left me there,” she said. “He literally left me there. I turned around and he was gone. I think the cameraman had to walk me back to my car.”
A survivor comes forward
In her interview with the Tribune, Gant described herself as a regular teenager when she sneaked out of her home in 2014 and befriended someone in the neighborhood, which led to her being trafficked by another man.
After weeks of being drugged and abused, Gant was rescued. Her rescuers, including Holmes, took her to a White Castle to talk and to meet her mom, she remembers.
Holmes earned her trust after the rescue and “developed what, in (her) view, was a caring and close relationship,” according to the lawsuit.
On the day they drove to the lakefront, where he allegedly gave her marijuana and requested oral sex, Gant said it reminded her of the weeks she was trafficked.
“I didn’t say anything because it threw me back in that position that I was in,” Gant said. “He was a higher authority.”
Gant’s lawsuit said Holmes had a gun on him as well as “a security badge around his neck.” The lawsuit states he “pointedly” set the gun down on his pile of clothes at the motel where he allegedly sexually assaulted Gant again.
Afterward, Gant said, she was “on mute all the way home” and she “never wanted to tell anyone. I didn’t want people to think I was a dirty person.”
Nine years later, Gant said, she went to police after her mother saw media accounts about a Dolton village employee’s allegations that Holmes had drugged her on a work trip to Las Vegas and that she woke up next to him in a hotel room.
A Las Vegas police investigative file obtained by the Tribune through a public records request describes evidence in the case, including a recording of Holmes allegedly speaking about his encounter with the worker.
In her lawsuit, the woman alleged she went out for dinner with Holmes, whom she thought of as “an uncle.” After awhile, the woman felt disoriented, told him so and blacked out, according to the suit.
That night, Holmes called a member of former Dolton Mayor Tiffany Henyard’s security detail and described “a host of his exploits from the trip, many of a sexual nature,” according to the lawsuit.
The suit states that Henyard asked the officer why the trustee would have called him, and he said he didn’t know other than “to brag.” Henyard, also a defendant in the lawsuit, filed a legal response denying these and other allegations.
Chicago Survivors fired Holmes in May 2024 in the wake of the employee’s allegations.
“Our mission is to provide crime victim services to family members of homicide victims so our relationships with those families and our community is paramount,” JaShawn Hill, executive director of Chicago Survivors, said in a statement. “Without compromise, there needs to be strong mutual trust and an assumed high level of safety for the adults and children we serve.”
Hill did not answer questions from the Tribune about Holmes’ conduct with the group.
Gant, meanwhile, said that when she went to the Area 3 police station on Belmont Avenue in April 2024 to file a report she felt police did not take her seriously and botched basic facts about her statement.
Gant submitted a complaint to the Civilian Office of Police Accountability and filed her lawsuit against Holmes and Morrison Security, a firm owned by Morrison. The lawsuit alleges negligent supervision and retention of Holmes by the company.
The suit also states that at the time of the alleged assault Holmes drove a “vehicle displaying the name of (Morrison Security Corp.).”
Morrison told the Tribune that Holmes worked briefly for Morrison Investigations but did not work for Morrison Security and that Holmes did not have access to Morrison company vehicles. Morrison told the Tribune the allegations in the lawsuit are untrue and he views the suit as a “shakedown.”
“It is egregiously false,” Morrison said. “It’s money-chasing, and it’s harassment in nature. It’s purely political.”
For his part, Holmes continues to work as an anti-violence activist on his own, in addition to serving as a Dolton trustee.
After a recent shooting in a Chatham parking lot, a Tribune reporter saw him standing nearby, chatting with a police officer over the crime scene tape.
Gant said she is speaking out about Holmes because she does not want anyone to feel how she has felt in the decade since the alleged sexual assault.
Gant added: “The more we stay silent, the more they will get away with it.”
Flowers is a freelance journalist. Pratt is a Tribune reporter. ChicagoTribune’s Caroline Kubzansky contributed.