CHICAGO — Police say a 9-year-old Chicago boy was lured into an alley and killed in apparent gang-related retaliation, reports CBS News’ Dean Reynolds.
Tyshawn Lee, a fourth-grader, was shot in the head and back Monday afternoon near his grandmother’s house in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood.
Superintendent of Police Garry McCarthy said at a press conference at the murder scene Thursday it was the most “abhorrent, cowardly, unfathomable crime” in his 35 years of police work.
He said Tyshawn was on his way to his grandmother’s on Monday afternoon when he joined others in the alley near her house. That’s when the boy was swept into a bloody feud involving two rival factions of the same gang. His execution was the latest in a series of vengeful assaults going back months.
Police say Tyshawn’s father, Pierre Stokes, is an active member of one of those gang factions. They believe that’s the reason his son was targeted. Tyshawn’s mother Karla Lee reportedly denied any gang connections within her family, but Stokes himself agrees his son was intentionally killed.
“If he wasn’t a target he wouldn’t have gotten hit so many times in the back and the face. I think he was a target,” said Stokes.
McCarthy said Stokes is not cooperating with the investigation. “Let me put it this way. We’ve tried to interview him at least twice. I can’t even tell you what he said because you can’t say it on TV. But he made it emphatically clear that he’s not cooperating with us.”
In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Stokes said that he didn’t believe anyone would want to hurt him, but if they did, there would be no reason to harm his son instead because Stokes is easily found in the neighborhood.
He said investigators seem more interested in him than in finding who killed his son.
“A baby was executed; a baby was assassinated in this alley,” the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a Roman Catholic priest and Chicago social activist, said at the news conference Thursday. “We have gone to a new low.”
A spokesman for Supt. McCarthy has confirmed to the Chicago Tribune that a person of interest was being interviewed Wednesday night about Lee’s murder after turning himself or herself in. The person was reportedly later released.
The police readily acknowledge that fear of retaliation is keeping many people from coming forward with information. A $35,000 reward was being offered for information leading to an arrest.
