CHICAGO (AP) — A Chicago man has been charged with first-degree murder, after authorities say he lured a 9-year-old boy into an alley with a promise to buy him a juice box and then shot him in the head because of his father’s gang ties.
Dwright Boone-Doty, 22, was charged Monday night in the Nov. 2 death of Tyshawn Lee. Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Boone-Doty has been held since his November arrest on unrelated gun charges. Guglielmi said Boone-Doty has admitted to shooting the boy.
The fourth-grader was one of more than 400 homicide victims in the Chicago last year. But even in a city where children are all too often the innocent victims of relentless gang warfare, Tyshawn’s killing was shocking because, according to police, he was killed for no other reason than to punish his father.
“Tyshawn was an innocent child betrayed by these three men,” Interim ChicagoPolice Superintendent John Escalante told reporters. “And sadly he paid the ultimate price for gang violence, senseless gang violence, that plagued his neighborhood.”
Lee had set his basketball down and jumped onto the swings in Dawes Park when Boone-Doty approached him, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez said at the news conference. Boone-Doty dribbled the boy’s basketball a few times, gave it back to him and offered to buy him whatever he wanted from a store, she said.
They then walked off together into a nearby alley, where Boone-Doty shot the boy several times at close range, Alvarez said. She said two cohorts, 27-year-old Corey Morgan and Kevin Edwards, were in on the plan and followed Boone-Doty and Tyshawn into the alley in an SUV.
Morgan is jailed on murder charges. He denies any involvement in the shooting. Edwards remains at-large and is believed to be hiding in Iowa, according to U.S. Marshals.
Police say Tyshawn was targeted because of his father’s gang affiliation and a recent series of shootings between two rival gangs, the Gangster Disciples and the Black P Stones, in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. Investigators believe that the boy was killed in retaliation for the Oct. 13 gang killing of Tracey Morgan, Corey Morgan’s 25-year-old brother.
It was not immediately clear Tuesday if Boone-Doty had an attorney who can comment on his behalf. Neither the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office nor the public defender’s office immediately responded to phone messages seeking that information.
Boone-Doty also is charged with murder in the Oct. 18 shooting death of 19-year-old Brianna Jenkins and attempted murder and aggravated battery in the wounding of Deshari Bowens, according to the state’s attorney’s office. Bowens, a 20-year-old man who is affiliated with a gang, was sitting in a car with Jenkins when she was killed.
Boone-Doty was paroled from the Illinois Department of Corrections in August after serving about two years on a five-year sentence in a drug case.