Boy, 9, Shot Dead in Chicago on Way to Grandmother’s House Was ‘TARGETED’

By Joseph Tippins on November 5, 2015

Nine-year-old Tyshawn Lee was targeted because of his father's gang ties, lured into a South Side alley Monday afternoon and executed, Chicago police officials said Thursday. Speaking at the edge of the Gresham alley where Tyshawn was shot multiple times, Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy called the slaying "probably the most abhorrent, cowardly, unfathomable crime" he had seen in his 35 years in law enforcement.

McCarthy said police believe Tyshawn was killed because of his father's gang ties and a recent series of shootings between rival gangs.
Law enforcement sources have told the Tribune that the bloody conflict involves rival factions of two of Chicago's oldest gangs — the Gangster Disciples and the Black P Stones. Police believe the Terror Dome faction of the Black P Stones targeted Pierre Stokes' son because his father, a convicted felon, reputedly belongs to the Gangster Disciples' Killa Ward faction.

Last month, a Killa Ward member was wounded and a teenage woman killed in a retaliatory shooting just days after a Terror Dome member was fatally shot and his mother wounded, according to police.
Tyshawn, a fourth-grader at Joplin Elementary School who loved to play basketball, was walking to his grandmother's house Monday afternoon when police said he was lured to the alley in the 8000 block of South Damen Avenue and shot repeatedly. A basketball he always carried with him was found nearby.

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