Man charged with murder of Tyshawn Lee

Morgan was denied bond on Friday, prosecutors said.

A report in The Chicago Tribune said the police questioned Morgan two days after Tyshawn’s killing but released him.

Prosecutors say Cory Morgan (left) and Kevin Edwards planned the heinous murder of 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee.

Lee was in a neighborhood park in Chicago’s Auburn Gresham neighborhood when police say he was “lured” into an alley and shot multiple times. They said at least two others had also been involved.

But over time, McCarthy said, forensic evidence, witness identification and information developed from community members helped lead the police to the suspects. He was also grazed in the back, right forearm and right hand.

“He’s definitely on the run, we believe he’s still in the area”, McCarthy said. Morgan was released after posting his $100,000 bond.

The US city is notorious for gun crime, but Tyshawn Lee’s November 2 death managed to horrify a Chicago already reeling from more than 450 murders this year.

With recent rival gang shootings, police believe that Tyshawn was lured into the alley and executed due to his father Pierre Stokes’ gang ties. They both were ordered held on $1 million bail to the sounds of gasps in the courtroom.

“I’m not hard to find”, Stokes said. Police chief Garry McCarthy, who has been facing staunch criticism all week over his department’s handling of a different murder case, called Lee’s killing “probably the most abhorrent, cowardly, unfathomable crime” he’d seen in his entire career.

The police superintendent would not confirm if it was the same man arrested last week with Morgan in Evergreen Park, Dwright Boone-Doty, 22, who remains in custody at Cook County Jail. Tyshawn was playing on a swing set, his basketball next to him, prosecutors said. Two weeks later, Morgan was arrested again and charged with a weapons violation unrelated to Tyshawn’s killing.

Arrested with him was Dwright Boone-Doty, 21, of the 7300 block of South Vernon.

In denying bail for Morgan, an emotional Judge Peggy Chiampas called him “a predator, stalking his prey” – a little boy stuck in a gang war.

“When we solve this case”, he said, “we’re going to find an individual with an extensive, violent criminal history who likely should not have been on the streets”. Morgan’s mother was shot in the arm during the attack.