CHICAGO, Nov. 6 (UPI) — Chicago police believe Tyshawn Lee, a 9-year-old boy, was lured into an alley and executed earlier this week as part of a gang-related retaliation against his father.
Tyshawn was shot multiple times in a South Side alley near his grandmother’s house in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood on Monday. On Thursday, Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said Tyshawn was “murdered in probably the most abhorrent, cowardly, unfathomable crime that I’ve witnessed in 35 years of policing.”
McCarthy said Tyshawn was targeted because of his “family relationship with a member of a gang.”
“We’re pretty certain that this is not an accident. He was not a bystander,” McCarthy told reporters. “Tyshawn’s father has ties to a certain gang that is in conflict with another gang.”
Tyshawn’s father, Pierre Stokes, 25, does believe his son was targeted but not as part of a retaliation. He is not cooperating with police.
“No, I don’t think it was no retaliation because I never did nothing … for nobody to hurt my son,” Stokes told the Chicago Tribune, adding he’s receiving unnecessary police attention.
“They’re more worried about me. Why are you worried about me, not the killer?” Stokes said. “I’m not the killer. Worry about the killer.”
Stokes said he didn’t believe anyone would want to harm him, but if they did, he’s “not hard to find.”
“If [Tyshawn] wasn’t a target he wouldn’t have gotten hit so many times in the back and the face. I think he was a target,” Stokes also said.
The Rev. Michael Pfleger, a Catholic priest and social activist, condemned the murder of Tyshawn, a fourth-grader who loved to play basketball. His basketball was found near his body.
“What happened to Tyshawn Lee took us to a new low,” Pfleger said. “This wasn’t a drive-by. This was not a spray of bullets. A baby was executed. A baby was assassinated right behind us in this alley.”
