USA TODAY International Edition
Trial to begin in 9- year- old’s execution
Chicago rocked by death of Tyshawn Lee
CHICAGO – Nearly four years after a 9- year- old boy was shot and killed in one of Chicago’s most horrific crimes, two purported gang members are set to stand trial for murder.
Two of three men charged with carrying out the November 2015 attack on Tyshawn Lee – a fourth grader who prosecutors say was killed by gang members to send a message to his father, an alleged member of a rival gang – will be tried together before separate juries, which were finalized before opening statements Tuesday morning. Tyshawn’s family members packed the court, his grandmother wearing a tie- dye Tshirt with the boy’s school photo. The trial is expected to last four weeks.
Even for a city all too familiar with gun violence, Tyshawn’s death was shocking.
“To me, it was one of the most horrendous and horrific things. I think it shook Chicago. It literally shook it – to think that we had stooped to the level of a 9- year- old being assassinated,” said the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a Roman Catholic priest who presided over the funeral Mass.
Hundreds attended Tyshawn’s funeral. Tyshawn’s aunt, Valencia Lee, said in her eulogy that he loved basketball and dreamed of playing in the NBA.
After school on Nov. 2, 2015, Tyshawn was sitting on a swing at the park down the street from his grandmother’s house when a man approached him, offered to buy him a snack and then led him to an alley, where he shot the child several times at close range, prosecutors say.
The execution- style shooting was an act of revenge. Two gang members, Dwright Boone- Doty and Corey Morgan, believed that a rival faction had killed Morgan’s 25- year- old brother and wounded his mother a month earlier. Angered, Morgan said that he “was going to kill grandmas, mamas, kids and all,” according to court documents.
Boone- Doty allegedly first retaliated by firing into a car occupied by a rival gang member, missing the rival but killing the 19- year- old woman who was sitting beside him. Boone- Doty has pleaded not guilty in that attack.
Prosecutors say the defendants then turned their attention to getting back at Tyshawn’s father, Pierre Stokes, who was also an alleged member of the rival gang. According to prosecutors, a third man, Kevin Edwards, drove Boone- Doty and Morgan to Dawes Park and waited with Morgan in the SUV.
That’s when Boone- Doty struck up a conversation with Tyshawn and led him to the alley, prosecutors say.
Edwards, the driver, pleaded guilty to first- degree murder in exchange for a 25- year prison sentence.
On the day Boone- Doty first appeared in court accused of killing Tyshawn, he laughed about the murder and said he was writing a rap about it. That same day, Tyshawn’s father, Stokes, opened fire on gang rivals, wounding three of them, authorities say. Stokes is in jail awaiting trial on aggravated battery and other charges related to that attack.