CHICAGO – In the latest in a series of retaliatory shootings amid a South Side gang war, the father of slain Chicago 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee has been charged with shooting the girlfriend of one of the men in custody for the killing of his 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 for shooting a woman and two men Tuesday.
Law enforcement sources identified the woman as the girlfriend of Corey Morgan, who is in custody awaiting trial in connection with 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.
“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 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 Tuesday to be held without bail in the killing of Stokes’ son following the filing of charges against him. He marked 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 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.
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