Father of slain boy ordered held without bail in shooting case

The father of slain 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee was ordered held without bail Monday after he was charged with shooting three people in the Gresham neighborhood, including the girlfriend of one of the men charged in the murder of his son.

In the weeks after his son’s murder, authorities said Pierre Stokes did little to help investigators identify the killers, even though police said the boy was lured into an alley and shot by men who targeted the boy because Stokes was a high-ranking member of a band of Gangster Disciples.

The fourth-grader’s killing was the most brazen in a string of violent clashes between members of the Disciples and the Black P Stones stretching over months. Last Tuesday, with two of the three men allegedly involved in Tyshawn’s shooting behind bars and the third on the lam, prosecutors say Stokes opened fire on the girlfriend of a man who allegedly stalked Tyshawn, and wounded her and two men who were with her.

Stokes faces three counts of attempted murder and for violating conditions of his bond on a prior, unrelated gun charge.

“We have already lost a child. We have already had how many other murders associated with this war?” State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez said outside the courtroom Monday. “Now three more people shot. So it needs to end.”

Stokes, 25, wearing a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, shook his head repeatedly as Assistant State’s Attorney George Canellis described how Stokes fired on the woman, Robin Matthews, and her nephews, Antwan and Kevin Davis, as they rushed up to a Shell station on 79th Street, where they said Stokes was scuffling with another of their cousins.

“The defendant [Stokes] pulled out a gun,” Canellis told Judge Laura Sullivan. “He said ‘I’m going to kill you, bitch’ . . . and he started shooting.”

Canellis said Stokes fired four to five shots as the Davises and Matthews fled. Matthews’ cheek was grazed and shots struck Antoine Davis twice in the shoulder and Kevin in the arm and thigh. Surveillance cameras showed Stokes at the gas station, and running away with a gun, but investigators do not have video of the shooting, Canellis said.

Outside the courthouse, Stokes’ girlfriend, Naisha Frazier, said Stokes was innocent and was not active in gangs, claiming Matthews had been trying to goad Stokes since Corey Morgan was arrested in connection with Tyshawn’s murder.

“Robin, she came up there to fight,” Frazier said. “I feel like this was a setup. After he lost his son, they wanted him in jail, because they feel like he had something to do with . . . another murder.”

Prosecutors say Morgan, 27, and Kevin Edwards, 22, were riding with Dwright Boone-Doty in a black SUV when they spotted Tyshawn playing at Dawes Park on Nov. 2, 2015. Boone-Doty was charged last week as the triggerman in Tyshawn’s killing. He allegedly bragged to a jailhouse informant that the three men had stalked Tyshawn and his grandmother for days, and that they planned to kidnap him and cut off his ears and fingers, before killing him.

Three weeks earlier, Morgan’s brother, Tracey Morgan, was gunned down outside a meeting of recent parolees hosted by Chicago Police on the South Side. Tracey Morgan was killed as he sat in a car with his mother, who was wounded by gunfire. The shooting, prosecutors have said, prompted Corey Morgan to suspend the rules of gang warfare and target non-gang members.

Prosecutors say Killa Ward member Boone-Doty shot and killed 19-year-old Brianna Jenkins as she sat in a car with her boyfriend, a P Stones member, who was wounded by gunfire.

Prosecutors claim that Boone-Doty told the informant he lured the boy away from Dawes Park and into an alley and shot him several times at close range.

In interviews with reporters since his son was killed, Stokes has bristled at police statements about his gang ties and said officers have harassed him and his friends. At a November press conference held in front of the alley where Tyshawn’s body was found, then-police Supt. Garry McCarthy singled Stokes out for being unhelpful to investigators as they tried to develop suspects in the killing.

Stokes arrived at that press conference moments after McCarthy left and spoke briefly with police brass. A day earlier, police had raided Stokes’ girlfriend’s apartment, bearing a warrant that listed Stokes as the target of an investigation into drug-trafficking. Police seized $2,500 in cash and a few small baggies of marijuana from the apartment, smashing windows and charring the carpet with flash-bang grenades as they entered, but made no arrests, Stokes said.

Stokes told reporters then: “They need to stop looking at me. I want justice for my son.”

Contributing: Jon Seidel