Man charged with shooting 3-year-old girl in Back of the Yards

A South Side man has been charged with shooting a 3-year-old girl and her father as they ran away from him last week in Back of the Yards.

Cook County Judge David R. Navarro denied bail Saturday for 25-year-old Cornelius D. Mossette, charged with four felonies in the July 25 shooting that wounded the man and his daughter.

About 2:40 p.m. that day, the man and girl were walking on a sidewalk in the 1900 block of West 48th Street, where Mossette pulled up about 10 feet behind them in a car, rolled down his window and started talking to them, prosecutors said Saturday at the Leighton Criminal Court Building.

Mossette pulled out a handgun and pointed it out the window, prompting the 34-year-old man to run away with his daughter, according to prosecutors.

Mossette fired at them, striking the girl once in each leg and the man once in the right foot, prosecutors said. Both were treated at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

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Officers found seven 9mm shell casings at the scene, and surveillance video from a nearby police camera showed the girl crumpled on the ground after the shooting, prosecutors said.

Chicago police arrested Mossette one week later in Park Manor, where he was stopped in the back seat of the same car used in the shooting, prosecutors said. The man wounded in the attack identified Mossette as the shooter in a photo array, authorities said.

Mossette, of Chatham, was charged with two counts each of aggravated battery with a firearm and attempted first-degree murder, court documents show. Prosecutors said Mossette was on parole at the time of the shooting for a 2012 residential burglary conviction, for which he was sentenced to eight years. That conviction was his second for the same charge in two years.

Mossette will remain jailed until his next court appearance on Wednesday.