Max Lewis Wiki – Max Lewis Biography
Max Lewis was a college student who grew up in the Denver area and died after being hit by a stray bullet on a train in Chicago. Max Lewis was a student at the University of Chicago and had been living in Chicago this summer.
Lewis was on his way home last Thursday from a shift at his summer internship downtown when he was seriously injured on a Green Line CTA elevated train. A bullet seemed to go through the window at random and hit Max Lewis on the back of the head. His life ended Sunday when he was taken off life support.
Max Lewis Age
Max Lewis was 20 years old.
Max Solomon Lewis killed by a stray bullet in Chicago
Max Solomon Lewis, a 20-year-old University of Chicago student, was on his way home from his summer internship Thursday night when a stray bullet went through the window of his train car and struck him on the back of the neck.
Lewis, a rising third-year student, was rushed to the University of Chicago Medical Center and underwent emergency surgery. Once he came out of sedation, he was paralyzed from the neck down, but cognitively conscious. On Saturday night, doctors asked Lewis to make a decision: stay on a ventilator for the rest of his life or withdraw life support. He blinked the choice from him to his parents and doctors: remove the ventilator. Lewis died Sunday morning.
“On the morning of July 4, Max Lewis left life support and entered the kingdom of Abraham, Moses and King Solomon,” read a statement on a commemorative Go FundMe account created by his fraternity brothers. At press time, more than $ 65,000 had been donated, well above its original goal of $ 20,000.
About 80 friends of Lewis from the University of Chicago will travel to Denver to attend his funeral, which is scheduled for Thursday, by the grave at Fairmount Cemetery, said his aunt Melissa Rivkin. Rivkin spoke to the Forward after she arrived from Chicago, where she, with the rest of her family, was watching by her nephew’s bedside.
Lewis was president of the University of Chicago chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi, the Jewish fraternity. His closest friends described him as impulsive, athletic, ambitious, funny, and always concerned about people’s well-being.
Caleb Smith-Salzberg was one of several young men who consider Lewis his best friend. He and a few others rushed to the hospital Thursday night as soon as they found out what had happened.
“We have a very close group. Seven or eight of us consider ourselves our best friends. Everybody loved Max, ”Smith-Salzberg, 20, said in an interview from Chicago, where he had just moved into the frat house where he hoped to live with Lewis. Smith-Salzberg, vice president of AEPi, will now become its president.
The hospital was closed, as is often the case, to prevent someone with a gun from entering, so friends could not enter to visit Lewis. They waited outside for hours, waiting for news from his friend. At around 2 a.m., one of the AEPi brothers spoke with Lewis’s mother, Dr. Rebecca Rivkin, and learned that he had come out of surgery, even though he was paralyzed, on a ventilator and in stable condition.
Rivkin is a doctor of internal medicine in Denver. Max refused all sedatives and pain relievers from the moment he woke up and was told what had happened to him, ”Smith-Salzberg said. “His parents wanted him to see us, but his condition worsened Friday night.”
The young men met two weeks into their freshman year, when they both became involved with AEPi, and lived together for a month recently, as well as last summer. They both had dual majors in computer science and business economics.
Lewis was “super motivated,” Smith-Salzberg said. “Whenever he proposed something, he did it. He could see it in the way he was behaving and in his eyes, he was so focused. Just 10 days ago, Lewis was offered a competitive summer internship that he had worked hard to get, for the summer of 2022. Third-year internships usually lead to job offers.
“Max had just gotten the offer from him and then he was able to let go after being stressed during the process,” said Ari Ezra, who intended to share an apartment in the frat house with Lewis. Ezra, also 20, is currently in Israel with another AEPi brother who works on internships in Tel Aviv through Onward Israel. They plan to watch the live broadcast of Lewis’s funeral.
“Max was always very motivated,” said Noah Kaye, another of Lewis’s frat brothers and best friends. In addition to being president of AEPi, Lewis was the chief operating officer of the student investment firm Promontory. He also studied at UChicago’s Chabad in their Sinai Scholars program.
With Lewis, “no matter what kind of conversation it was, it was a good time,” Kaye said. “He was one of the funniest people I knew, but not on purpose. He was very conscientious. No matter what he was saying, he would always make people laugh and smile and be happy, sometimes at his expense. It’s one of the reasons. why everyone loved him so much. ”
Lewis’s friends said that he often ran from meeting to meeting, rather than walking.
“He came to my apartment last year, stopped for 20 minutes to relax, and then ran back. She would always run, even if it was two blocks. He would say he did it because he was more efficient, ”Ezra said. Lewis was also strict about his health, frequently eating only chicken breast and Brussels sprouts for dinner, and he gave up gluten after getting a skin rash last year, Ezra said.
Read Also: Who is James Wyatt Dentel? Wiki, Biography, Age, Engaged to Kelly Jacobs, Arrested
Each year, the expanded Rivkin family comes together to remember Lewis’s grandmother, Marsha Rivkin, who died of ovarian cancer in 1993, and raises money for research into the disease by celebrating a career. When he was just 10 years old, Lewis ran with the grown men in a 5K race and came third. After that, he always finished first, Jessica Rivkin, another of his aunts, recalled in a telephone interview. And he would happily take eight-day off-grid hiking trips with his family around Denver, Melissa Rivkin said.
Last Friday night, Lewis’s parents, brother, and aunts joined AEPi members for Shabbat dinner at UChicago Chabad. Hillel Rabbi Anna Levine joined them. On Sunday night, the family went to the frat house and spent time with Lewis’s frat brothers, listening to stories about him.
“His mother really wants the funeral to be positive and for her to remember wonderful things about Max, and for her not to be sad about what may have been,” Smith-Salzberg said.
Rebecca Rivkin was not available for an interview as she and her family drove back to Denver from Chicago. Lewis is survived by his parents, Dr. Rebecca Rivkin and Mark Lewis, and a 16-year-old brother, Eli, as well as his grandparents and many of his cousins in their close extended family, said Aunt Melissa Rivkin.
Chicago news reports say police have not identified the shooter, although they have indicated they do not believe Lewis was the intended target.
Lewis was riding the CTA Green Line train on his way home from his summer internship in downtown Chicago. The shooting took place around 7 p.m. on July 1, while the train was stopped at the 51st Street / Washington Park station. More than 1,600 people have been shot in Chicago so far this year. During the July 4 holiday weekend, 100 people were hit by gunfire, 18 of them fatally, according to the Chicago Police Department.
Lewis’s best friends, young men in their 20s, are all stunned and said they felt powerless. One noted that if he had been sitting a few inches to the right or left, he would not have been killed.
Kaye, a political science student, is frustrated by the “structural barriers” to true gun control. “Something must first be done about the NRA and people like [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell. I don’t know what I could do to change things. ”
Kaye said Lewis “was very present in our lives. We joined our fraternity at the same time, we were together from the second week of school. We ate together twice a day. That’s all. I don’t know what it will be like to be in school without him, “Kaye said.” For me, it goes between times when I feel like it’s not real and times when I break down and cry. ”
“Once he returns to Chicago, everything will be well established. He feels devastating. It was so random and unlikely and unfortunate, ”Ezra said.
“Max’s death doesn’t feel real,” Smith-Salzberg said. “It’s just shocking.”