A jury on Wednesday found the father of Tyshawn Lee, the 9-year-old lured into an alley and shot in 2015, guilty of trying to kill three people to avenge his son’s death.
The jurors rendered the verdict at the Leighton Criminal Court Building after deliberating for several hours.
Prosecutors had told jurors that not long after chilling details of the slaying of his 9-year-old son were revealed in court, Pierre Stokes encountered the girlfriend of one of his son’s killers, looked straight at her, threatened her and fired six shots.
Stokes, 33, was accused of shooting and injuring the woman and her two adult nephews in March of 2016 to avenge the brutal killing of his son, Tyshawn Lee, that November. He began standing trial last week on charges of attempted murder and other felonies.
Stokes was found guilty of three counts of attempted murder, two counts of aggravated battery with a firearm and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. The jury acquitted Stokes of one count of aggravated battery with a firearm.
Tyshawn was lured into an alley by gang rivals of his father’s where he was shot in the head, police have said, revenge for an escalating gang feud that had resulted in at least two fatal shootings prior to the boy’s death. The rare targeted attack on a child drew outrage across the city and prompted protests, vigils and calls for gun control.
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“Vigilante justice is not justice,” Assistant State’s Attorney Melanie Matias told the jury during closing arguments at the Leighton Criminal Court Building. “Street justice is not justice.”
Seven years after the shooting, prosecutors were faced with a string of uncooperative witnesses, including the three victims in the case who declined on the stand to name their shooter. Prosecutors then proffered to the jury the victims’ original statements to police, as well as statements to a grand jury in which they identified Stokes.
Defense attorneys, though, argued the state’s witnesses lied to investigators who latched onto a theory of the crime and didn’t keep investigating beyond it. The attorneys also maintained that Chicago police detectives were wrong about the motive for the shooting, working off outdated knowledge of how city street gangs operate.
“All three of them are liars,” said Assistant Public Defender Celeste Addyman, referring to the shooting victims. “They lied before, they lied now and you can’t trust or believe anything that they said.”
The shocking killing of a 9-year-old — felled not by a stray bullet but rather shot in the head after he was lured into an alley with promises of treats — drew widespread media attention.
Tyshawn was 83 pounds and 4-foot-8 when he died, wearing an orange polo shirt and carrying a basketball. The slaying was a result of clashes between factions of the Black P Stones and the Gangster Disciples. Stokes belonged to the Killa Ward faction of the Gangster Disciples, prosecutors alleged.
Chicago police arrested three people for Tyshawn’s slaying: Corey Morgan, whose brother was shot and killed weeks before the boy’s death, Kevin Edwards and Dwright Doty. Doty and Morgan were convicted by juries and sentenced to 90 years in prison for Doty and 65 for Morgan. Edwards pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
It was remarks during a bond hearing for Doty that prosecutors alleged sparked the later shooting that Stokes is accused of. Prosecutors had said Doty laughed while he told other jail inmates that he shot Tyshawn in the head. He had considered torturing the boy by cutting off his fingers and ears, prosecutors alleged during the March 8, 2016, hearing.
Angered after the details were released in court, Stokes later that evening fired shots at Morgan’s girlfriend, Robyn Matthews, and her two adult nephews at a gas station at 79th Street and Ashland Avenue on the South Side, prosecutors alleged.
He looked at her, said, “I’m going to kill you, b—-,” and then fired shots, wounding her, prosecutors said.
“Horrible things were said on the news that day, horrible, graphic things,” Matias said. “He was upset, anyone would be.”
Addyman, though, argued to the jury that the shooting was at 5:30 p.m., before the 6 p.m. news. She also said the four-month gap between Tyshawn’s killing and the gas station shooting cut against prosecutors’ arguments.
“To try to say this is a retaliatory shooting for Tyshawn’s death doesn’t make sense,” she said, noting that the other shootings that were part of the gang feud happened in short succession. “This happens four or five months later. It’s not following that pattern.”