Two suspects in custody for Chicago gang hit on 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee

CHICAGO— A 27-year-old gang member faces a murder charge for the brutal execution of a 9-year-old boy who was lured into an alley and shot earlier this month in a retaliation killing, police said Friday.

Chicago Police Superintendent Gary McCarthy identified the suspect as Corey Morgan, of Lansing, Ill., who was charged with first-degree murder. McCarthy said that Morgan had at least two other accomplices. Police declined to detail the exact role they believe Morgan and his accomplices played in the killing.

Police are hunting for a second man, whom McCarthy identified as Kevin Edwards. Investigators believe one other person played a role in the shooting. That person is in police custody on an unrelated charge. Police have yet to identify that suspect.

McCarthy said they believe the suspects targeted  Tyshawn because of his father's gang ties.

"It was act of barbarism, the assassination of a 9-year-old child as a gang retaliation to get back at his father," McCarthy said.

The father, Pierre Stokes, previously told reporters he is not in a gang and does not believe his son's killing was retaliation. Stokes is on probation for a 2011 armed robbery conviction. He was arrested and charged in June 2014 with unlawful use of a weapon, but has pleaded not guilty to that charge.

"All three (suspects) are in the same gang," McCarthy told reporters. "I can tell you this: They are going to be obliterated. That gang just signed its own death warrant."

McCarthy added that he is going to assign police resources to insure that "neither one of those gangs can raise their heads again."

Prosecutors described the Nov. 2 killing as part of a string of violence between factions of rival gangs, the Gangster Disciples and Black P Stones, on the city's South Side that began in August and has left at least two other people dead, in addition to several non-fatal shootings.

Cook County Prosecutor George Canellis said during Morgan's bond hearing on Friday afternoon that the alleged gang member was retaliating after his brother was killed and mother wound in a shooting  weeks earlier.

“After that day, [Morgan] and two others went out daily armed with guns looking to retaliate,” Canellis said, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Morgan’s attorney Jonathan Brayman said his client denied being involved in Tyshawn’s murder.

Judge Peggy Chiampas called Morgan a "predator stalking his prey" and ordered him held without bail.

“There is nothing this court can do to save grandmas,” Judge Peggy Chiampas said. “You are a danger not only to your self, to your community."

At his funeral, Tyshawn was recalled as a little boy who loved basketball, school and playing video games with his cousins. Police found the basketball that Tyshawn was known to carry with him everywhere he went near his body.McCarthy said investigators believe the boy was playing basketball at a nearby park when he was lured into the alley and killed.

McCarthy said Morgan and his lawyer met with police two days after Tyshawn's killing, but did not make a statement. He was arrested two weeks later in the Chicago suburbs on an unrelated weapons violation. Bond was set at $1 million, but Morgan was released after posting $100,000.

McCarthy said they believe that Edwards, the wanted suspect, was still in the area and urged the man to turn himself in.

"We are going to catch you, we're definitely going to catch him," McCarthy. "And quite frankly, in a heinous crime like this, he's probably better off if we catch him than somebody else."

Police and local activists offered reward money for information that would lead to the suspects' arrests. McCarthy said that police received plenty of community help in developing leads, but ultimately the reward money did not come into play.