SUN-TIMES EDITORIAL
The murder of a 9-year-old and the fight to end Chicago gun violence.
In the fight against gun violence, there is no more fitting poster child than Tyshawn Lee.
Tyshawn was killed in 2015. Chicago racked up some 450 murders that year.
But the 9-year-old’s murder stood out for its brutality. “An act of barbarism,” then-Police Supt. Garry McCarthy said at the time.
What sort of person, Chicagoans wondered, would be vicious enough, pathological enough and depraved enough to lure a child from a basketball court, shoot him in the head and leave him to die in an alley? All allegedly because of a gang rivalry and retribution for another murder?
Every weekend’s count of shootings and homicides provides fresh evidence of our city’s plague of gun violence.
Tyshawn’s murder reminds us of the worst that can happen when that violence spirals out of control. He was shot at close range — close enough to leave gunpowder residue on his face.
Prosecutors at the Leighton Criminal Courts Building began making their case Tuesday in the trials of Dwright Boone-Doty and Corey Morgan, the reputed gang members accused of murdering Tyshawn.
Eventually, jurors will weigh the evidence for and against their guilt and do their best to render justice.
One trial will end. The fight against gun violence must go on.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot recently took a step in that direction by creating a new Office of Public Safety to focus on reducing violent crime.
Everyone in the new office should remember Tyshawn.
House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, took a step, too, by announcing a new, bipartisan House Firearms Public Awareness Task Force to determine whether state laws should be changed to help curb gun violence. The task force will also examine bond reform and the role, if any, that it plays in fueling gun violence.
Those task force members should remember Tyshawn.
Mayor Lightfoot and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle must put aside their differences and work to create a more peaceful city. Both of them should remember Tyshawn.
Every victim of gun violence deserves to be remembered, of course.
But especially a 9-year-old, playing in a park.