Thread: 603 shot, 103 dead in 2016 in Chicago: 32 Shot, Five Fatally in Weekend Violence

Chicago: 32 Shot, Five Fatally in Weekend Violence

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by WARNER TODD HUSTON
14 Mar 2016 Chicago, IL 1,525

As Americans tallied up their primary choices for president of the United States, Chicago was counting a tally of its own in the number of citizens shot and killed by other citizens waging incessant gang violence, plaguing the city. This weekend some citizens of the Windy City were pulling out guns instead of ballots with a toll of 32 shootings that resulted in five deaths.

By Sunday morning the Chicago Sun-Times was already reporting that four Chicagoans had been killed by gunfire and another 22 wounded. But as Sunday drew to a close, ten more shootings occurred, along with yet another fatality.

One of the Sunday murder victims was a 16-year-old male gunned down in the city’s far South Side Rosemoor neighborhood. It was reported that when police arrived on the scene the teen was already dead from gunshots to the head.

Others killed included a 22-year-old man shot on the Northwest Side, a 24-year-old killed in Garfield Park, a 20-year-old man shot several times, and a pregnant woman shot in Jeffery Manor on the Far South Side. The fifth and final death occurred in the Roseland neighborhood.

The toll exceeds the tally from the same weekend in 2014 when 3 were killed and 6 wounded and rivals the 6 killed and 28 wounded over the same weekend last year.

Chicago has seen 603 shootings, of which 103 were fatal so far in 2016.

The weekend included the arrest of the father of a 9-year-old assassinated in a gang retaliation shooting late last year after he allegedly shot three people.

Police charged that gang bangers shot Little Tyshawn in the head last November. But law enforcement later said that the shooters belonged to a rival gang to that which Pierre Stokes, the boy’s father, belonged. On Sunday Stokes himself was arrested with the Chicago Police, charging that he engaged in a retaliatory shooting against the girlfriend of the man arrested for shooting his son.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...kend-violence/

Father of slain 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee charged with shooting 3

Pierre Stokes, inset, father of slain 9-year-old boy Tyshawn Lee, was charged with shooting three people.
(Eric Clark / Chicago Tribune, CPD)

Jeremy Gorner and Annie Sweeney Contact Reporters Chicago Tribune

In the latest in a series of retaliatory shootings amid a South Side gang war, the father of Tyshawn Lee has been charged with shooting the girlfriend of one of the men held in the killing of his 9-year-old son, authorities said Sunday.

A spokeswoman for the Cook County state's attorney's office confirmed that Pierre Stokes, 25, was charged with three counts of aggravated battery with a firearm and one count of unlawful use of a weapon by a felon in the shooting of a woman and two men at 5:45 Tuesday in the 7900 block of South Ashland Avenue.

Law enforcement sources identified the woman as the girlfriend of Corey Morgan, who is in custody awaiting trial in Tyshawn's killing. About three weeks before Tyshawn was lured from a Dawes Park play lot and executed, Morgan's brother was killed and mother wounded as part of a long-running gang feud, police have said.

In the latest shooting, Morgan's girlfriend suffered a graze wound, while the two men were taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn with non-life-threatening injuries.

A statement issued by police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the latest shooting shows the challenge confronting police in dealing with the rampant gang violence.


Commentary: Tyshawn Lee was captured and killed by a monster

"Mr. Stokes, who was involved in a gang lifestyle, ultimately suffered an unspeakable loss with the calculated execution of his son," the statement said. "Despite this, he continued to engage in the same gang activity that started this initial cycle of violence.

"CPD will continue our efforts to disrupt gang activity in Chicago and at the same time work with our community partners through our gang call-ins to try and urge gang members to see the casualties of that lifestyle and offer alternatives like job placement, training and education options," the statement said.

Stokes allegedly shot Morgan's girlfriend and the two others on the same day that Cook County prosecutors earlier revealed new details in court about Tyshawn's execution-style killing, including allegations that the gunman had considered torturing the fourth-grader by cutting off his fingers and ears.

Dwright Boone-Doty had been ordered on Tuesday to be held without bail in the killing of Stokes' son following the filing of charges against him. He is the second individual to be charged in the shocking killing — Morgan had been taken into custody shortly after the boy's Nov. 2 death.

Prosecutors have implicated Boone-Doty as the gunman who shot Tyshawn.

Chicago police believe Tyshawn was killed because of his father's alleged ties to the Killa Ward faction of the Gangster Disciples. That faction has been in a long-running and bloody gang war with the Bang Bang Gang/Terror Dome faction of the Black P Stones in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, police have said.


Police say Pierre Stokes, the father of slain 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee, shot three people, including the girlfriend of one of the men in custody for the shooting death of his son. March 13, 2016. (CBS Chicago)


Police are investigating if the rivalry has led to as many as 15 shootings, including at least five homicides, since 2011, according to law enforcement sources.

Police had taken Stokes into custody Friday for questioning after earlier issuing an investigative alert authorizing officers to arrest him, the sources said.

Sources have said that a Cook County Jail inmate secretly recorded Boone-Doty admitting his involvement in Tyshawn's killing while he was locked up on unrelated gun charges.

In addition to his alleged role in Tyshawn's killing, Boone-Doty was charged in an Oct. 18 shooting in which 19-year-old Brianna Jenkins was killed and a reputed Killa Ward member wounded as the two sat in a car in Auburn Gresham.

The gang feud had escalated significantly five days earlier when Corey Morgan's brother, Tracey, who was also a reputed Bang Bang Gang/Terror Dome member, was shot and killed while leaving a mandatory parolee meeting with Chicago police on the South Side. The Morgans' mother, who was in the car with her son, was wounded.

This breach of unwritten gang protocol — the wounding of a mother — drew a fiery response.

Corey Morgan was heard to say that he was targeting "grandmas, mamas, kids and all" for shootings, prosecutors have alleged.

Morgan, Boone-Doty and a third suspect took to the streets daily to make good on that promise, prosecutors said last week. At one point, Boone-Doty conducted surveillance on Tyshawn's grandmother with plans to kill her in order to draw out rival gang members, prosecutors alleged.

It was during this time that those three allegedly saw Tyshawn with his father, according to a law enforcement source.


The gang feud that led to Tyshawn Lee's slaying

On the afternoon of Oct. 18, five days after Tracey Morgan was killed, Boone-Doty was driving near 78th and Honore streets when he spotted a rival gang member sitting in a car, according to prosecutors. Boone-Doty exited his car, walked up to the rival's vehicle and opened fire at the rival and Jenkins, who was sitting beside him, prosecutors said.

Boone-Doty said he shot Jenkins "because she started screaming," prosecutors said.

Police have linked a gun recovered from Boone-Doty to Jenkins' killing, prosecutors said.

Their plan for revenge did not end there, the charges alleged. On the afternoon of Nov. 2, they spotted Tyshawn playing basketball in Dawes Park, prosecutors said.

Boone-Doty lured Tyshawn out of a play lot by asking him if he wanted to go to the store, according to prosecutors. When the boy said he had no money, Boone-Doty said he would buy him whatever he wanted, prosecutors said.

Tyshawn, a fourth-grader at Joplin Elementary School, was lured to the alley in the 8000 block of South Damen Avenue and shot repeatedly. A basketball that he always carried with him was found nearby.

Authorities have issued an arrest warrant for Kevin Edwards, the third suspect in Tyshawn's killing. He is believed to be out of state, according to sources.

In an interview with the Tribune shortly after his son's slaying, Stokes said he believed his son had been targeted but denied that anyone had reason to kill the boy in order to retaliate against him.


Two men, 30 and 31, were wounded at 79th Street and Ashland Avenue in the Gresham neighborhood, police said. Both were shot around 5:45 p.m. and taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center. The younger man was hit in the arm, and the older man was shot in the hip. At least one of them drove or was driven to 71st Street and Western Avenue before the vehicle crashed. Police later said a 29-year-old woman suffered a graze wound in the shooting, but refused medical attention.
(Eric Clark / Chicago Tribune)


But if anyone had a motive to kill him, Stokes said, there was no reason to take it out on his son because he's out in public in the neighborhood all the time. If anyone wanted to harm him, they could find the opportunity, he said.

"I'm not hard to find," Stokes said.

Stokes did not talk specifically about whether he was a gang member but said he disagreed with what police have said about him. He also expressed frustration with Chicago police, saying investigators seemed more interested in him than in finding who fatally shot Tyshawn.

"They're more worried about me. Why are you worried about me, not the killer?" Stokes said at the time. "I'm not the killer. Worry about the killer."

But Stokes said he felt guilty that he was not at his son's side to protect him.

"To be honest, I feel bad," he said of Tyshawn, who lived with his mother. "I feel like it's my fault."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...313-story.html