On one level, they appeared to be average boys.
At Kohn Elementary School, Cragg and Derrick Hardaway played on the basketball team, showing flashes of athleticism. Their nicknames: “CR” and “DR.”
A 6-foot 14-year-old, Derrick played basketball so much around his South Side neighborhood that he also was nicknamed “Dominique,” after the famed NBA player.
Derrick was quieter and perhaps more athletic. Cragg, 16, had attended a primary school for gifted children and later won math and science contests.
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At home, they sometimes fought. But their parents, Cragg Sr. and Ernestine Hardaway, saw it as sibling rivalry.
Authorities and others who also know the youths paint a starkly different portrait. The Hardaway brothers, they say, are hardened members of the Black Disciples gang.
They are boys, who by age 11 had taken up with gangs, authorities said. Their past is dotted with delinquency. And it was that downward spiral of gangs and crime that brought the brothers to the point of allegedly leading 11-year-old Robert “Yummy” Sandifer, a fellow gang member, to his execution at the mouth of a tunnel covered with gang graffiti at 108th Street and Dauphin Avenue, police said.
Cragg and Derrick were charged Friday with murder in the slaying. Charged as an adult, Cragg was being held on $5 million bond at the Audy Home, where Derrick also was being held. Prosecutors said they also would seek to have Derrick tried as an adult.
Police have identified Cragg as the gunman who shot Robert twice in his head with a small-caliber weapon. Authorities said the brothers were ordered by the Black Disciple hierarchy to kill Robert to prevent him from fingering gang members responsible for a recent spate of shootings, including two by Robert. Police said the 11-year-old fatally shot Shavon Dean on Aug. 28.
Witnesses have identified the brothers as the last people seen with Robert before he was found dead early Thursday. One of the youths confessed to the murder, while the other made statements to police placing him at the crime scene when Robert was slain, authorities said.
The Hardaway parents contend that their sons were taking Robert to his grandmother’s house, where he planned to turn himself in. They also say neither Cragg nor Derrick shot Robert. The youths’ parents and older sister Katrice further deny that the boys were involved with gangs to any great extent, even though Cragg and Derrick, by most other accounts, are gang members.
“They were gangbangers,” said one neighbor. “They wore their hats to the side and were always flashing signs. They beat up people. They threatened people.”
When they weren’t intimidating people in their Roseland neighborhood, residents said, the boys often spent afternoons shooting dice and drinking liquor in the alley behind their home. They frequently hung out with gang members in a nearby field or on street corners. Last weekend, Cragg had repeatedly sped recklessly through the alley in a car packed with young men, neighbors recalled.
Teachers at Kohn School, where Derrick graduated from 8th grade in June, described both Haradaway youths as “bright,” although their gang involvement was well known.
John Michaels, the boys’ basketball coach, described Derrick as a gang leader to whom kids at school often looked for guidance when trouble was brewing. Derrick was just as involved with gangs as his brother, school officials said.
Recently, Cragg had been remanded to Cook County Temporary Detention Center School, 1100 S. Hamilton Ave., where he will now attend school while incarcerated.
“You know what the bad part of it is? They were genuises,” said a neighbor. “One or both of them could have done something very useful to society. They could have done something.”
The Hardaway family remains hopeful.
“They ain’t Mother Teresa,” Katrice Hardaway, 21, said. “But I will be willing to lay down my life on the fact that they didn’t kill that boy.”
Meanwhile, authorities continued their investigation, focusing on members of the gang hierarchy who may have ordered Robert’s murder, said William P. Davis, police spokesman.