Friends of a graffiti artist who died after plunging into the Chicago River in a chase with police paid tribute the best way they knew how Wednesday: spray-painting a mural in his memory on a brick wall behind a Radio Shack in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood.

I don’t get why this story was written. People die all around Chicago every day. Some of them tragically, but few get a news story memorializing them — especially when they died running away from the cops for doing something illegal.

It’s tragic that a young life was cut short, but I did a search of some of his “art” on Flickr and most of it was nothing more than scrawling his tag on walls and dumpsters across the city.

There are some great street artists around Chicago. SOLVE was one of my favorites. Sure, it’s subjective deciding when graffiti goes from vandalism to art, but SOLVE’s stuff stayed in my head and at least made me think.

But throwing your life away and leaving behind a wife because you wrote your name on a wall, especially when there’s a city-run organization dedicated to wiping away your legacy? That I really don’t get.