There had been warnings, but no one imagined this could happen.
For weeks, two rival factions battled it out on Chicago’s South Side. One shooting left the mother of a gang member wounded and her 25-year-old son dead. A few days later, a young woman sitting in a car was fatally shot. With tensions high, outreach workers for CeaseFire traded bits of information and huddled with gang members to try to untangle the conflicts.
But the execution of 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee in an alley by 80th Street and Damen Avenue in early November was nothing anyone — not the most seasoned cops, not former longtime gang members — would have ever predicted. In Chicago’s long, troubled history of gang violence, children have far too often been the victims of stray bullets meant for others, but authorities allege Tyshawn was lured from a park and fatally shot because of his father’s alleged gang ties.
“When I found out he was targeted, I thought this is a new kind of killer, a new kind of shooter,” said Joewaine “Joe” Washington, a former gang member and CeaseFire violence interrupter who was monitoring the ongoing violence in the area. “It was a time bomb, but in my wildest dreams, I never knew it was going to escalate to a kid.”
Tyshawn’s slaying not only marks an apparent new low in gang violence but also illustrates how the splintering of gangs into less organized factions often controlling just a few blocks has fostered recklessness, say law enforcement and ex-gang members. The structure of these factions contrasts sharply with the tightly controlled supergangs once led by unchallenged leaders who ruled over large swaths of territory, controlling criminal enterprises and driving violence.
Today, shootings are as likely to stem from personal slights as official gang business or drug turf disputes, experts say. Adding to the turmoil, these gang factions are more active on social media, using hashtags and instant messages to threaten and challenge each other, keeping the level of animosity constant and elevated.
Retaliatory shootings
It’s a bone-chilling night in Auburn Gresham a week and a half after Tyshawn’s slaying. Winds howling at 40 mph rattle the No. 48 South Damen bus sign at 79th Street, one of the dividing lines between gang factions in the area. On this night, the gang border is peaceful, perhaps because of the crushing winds. Or it could be the three or four police cruisers making repeated passes.
“It’s been real quiet,” Washington said. But he fears that could change “once the grieving is over” for Tyshawn’s killing.
Chicago police and Cook County prosecutors allege Tyshawn’s killing was at least the fourth in a series of retaliatory shootings in a feud between factions in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood with ties to two of Chicago’s most historic gangs — Killa Ward of the Gangster Disciples and Terror Dome of the Black P Stones.
While detectives investigate whether the killing of a 29-year-old mother more than two years ago was connected to the back-and-forth violence between these two factions, the bloodletting really flared up in recent months, police said. Last Aug. 5, Adarius Hayes, 21, a reputed Killa Ward member, was found fatally shot inside a car at 75th Street and Damen Avenue about 6 a.m.
Two months later, Tracey Morgan, a reputed Terror Dome member, was shot and killed in the West Chatham neighborhood after leaving a mandatory meeting Oct. 13 for parolees, part of an anti-violence effort by Chicago police and other law enforcement. Morgan’s mother, who was driving the car, was wounded by the gunfire. Police were looking into whether Morgan was followed by a Killa Ward member who also attended the “gang call-in.”
Terror Dome is believed to have retaliated Oct. 18 by shooting up a car parked at another gang border at 78th and Honore streets, wounding a reputed Killa Ward member and killing 19-year-old Brianna Jenkins.
The escalating conflict did not go unnoticed on social media. “Ain’t no more loyalty and love in da game. Its not da 1990’s anymore,” someone with a “killaward” handle tweeted a day after Jenkins’ killing.
Jenkins’ mother, Mary, said she had moved from Chicago when her daughter was young, insisting on a safer suburban life for her. She had been a cheerleader at Stagg High School in Palos Hills before graduating. At the time of her death, she worked at McDonald’s but had recently taken an exam in hopes of becoming a nurse.
Jenkins said her daughter had known the man in her car for only a few weeks and likely had no idea she had parked in the middle of a deadly gang dispute.
Two weeks later, Terror Dome allegedly struck again, according to police and prosecutors.
After his brother and his mother were shot, Corey Morgan, 27, and two other Terror Dome members had driven around on a daily basis looking for revenge, prosecutors have alleged. Morgan vowed to kill “grandmas, mamas, kids and all,” they said.
The three found their target on a warm Nov. 2 as 83-pound Tyshawn played in Dawes Park near his grandmother’s Auburn Gresham home, prosecutors said. One of the three chatted up Tyshawn, walked with him to the alley and then shot him five times as Morgan and the third individual looked on from a black SUV, prosecutors charged.
Police found Tyshawn’s beloved basketball near his body. Superintendent Garry McCarthy said the boy was targeted because of his father’s gang involvement.
Morgan is being held without bond on a first-degree murder charge, but his two alleged accomplices have yet to be charged in Tyshawn’s slaying.
Andrew Papachristos, a Yale University sociologist, said gang retaliations can go on for lengthy periods once a personal conflict draws the interest of the entire faction.
“The question is when do personal disputes become group disputes?” said Papachristos, an expert on Chicago gangs. “Most often they don’t flare into full-fledged wars, but when they do, that is when things become even more tragic. … What seems to be unique (here) is the intensity.”
‘Shoot up the whole block’
The many children who have fallen victim to gang violence in Chicago over the decades have come to symbolize its senseless, unceasing nature. Some killings have been so tragic — including Dantrell Davis and Hadiya Pendleton — that the victims’ names have become part of the collective memory.
But with rare exception, they have been the victims of errant bullets meant for others, most often gang members, sometimes their own family members.
Among the exceptions, 11-year-old Robert “Yummy” Sandifer was found shot to death in a pedestrian tunnel under railroad tracks on the South Side more than two decades ago. The young gang member was suspected in the slaying of a 14-year-old neighbor, drawing quick retribution from his own gang. And just last year, 9-year-old Antonio Smith Jr. was fatally shot in the Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood by gang members who thought he was shouting warnings to rivals.
The motives for those killings are quite distinct, though, from the slaying of Tyshawn.
While Papachristos cautioned against jumping too quickly to conclusions, some experts interviewed by the Tribune suspect the targeting of a boy so young can be blamed in part on the fracturing of gangs into less structured factions and gang members’ increasing use of social media, often inflaming their conflicts with rivals. While no scientific evidence exists that increased use of social media leads to more violence, the level of vitriol is undeniable, many agreed.
“You can be as tough as you want to be (on social media),” said Steve Perkins, public safety manager of the Target Area Development Corporation, a community organization in Auburn Gresham. “You can say whatever you want to say.”
With the less structured gang factions have come fewer internal rules and discipline, according to police and former gang members.
“If this would have happened 25 years ago, they wouldn’t be looking for the perpetrators. They would already be dead,” said the Rev. Robin Hood, a community activist. “These cliques of gangs now, they have no leadership. They have no direction. They don’t follow the old codes.”
The loose structures of gang factions have proved to be a challenge on the street for law enforcement and outreach workers trying to stem the violence.
Rafi Peterson, who worked with CeaseFire for more than a decade in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood, said he once could call a single gang leader to calm tension.
“Now you’ve got to talk to 35 people on eight blocks,” he said in a reference to how much the factions have carved up neighborhoods.
In a recent telephone interview, State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez noted her office tracks 75 factions of the Gangster Disciples alone.
While homicides in Chicago have dropped sharply from their peak in the 1990s, motives for gang shootings seem more personal, the veteran prosecutor said, and the smaller, unorganized factions seem more willing to take shots that put more people at risk.
“These gangs were more structured. You did have somebody at the top calling the shots. The members seemed to listen,” Alvarez said. “(Today) these are random shootings. Their intent may be (to shoot) a gang member, but they shoot up the whole block.”
Charred debris
In the aftermath of Tyshawn’s shocking slaying, residents had made a makeshift memorial, carefully placing teddy bears, candles, a basketball still in its original packaging and a small Bible beside a garage at the scene of the shooting.
A week and a half later, the mementos remained but were strewn about the now-charred remains of the garage. Police said the burning candles had caused an accidental fire.
A handmade poster rested on the burned-out garage floor, a message scrawled in black marker: “When we as a people start targeting children then we as a people need to get involved.”
Garage owner Sidney Grandberry, 69, walked into the alley to meet with insurance adjusters. A smoky scent rose from the charred debris. Grandberry, who moved to the suburbs 20 years ago but whose daughter still lives at the house, gingerly stepped over the mess.
On this quiet, sunny afternoon, neighbors cleared leaves and residents gave friendly waves as they drove by.
But Grandberry, a former truck driver with a kind, gentle manner, knows a more troubling undercurrent is also present — young men who won’t listen, the threat of violence a constant fear.
“It wasn’t like this all the time,” he said of the neighborhood. “This baby died right here, murdered actually. And every time I come here, I am reminded of him. I can get another garage, but … the parents can’t get another (baby).”
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Twitter @JeremyGorner
