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Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
National
Jeremy Gorner and Steve Schmadeke

Prosecutor: Suspect in Tyshawn Lee killing had planned to torture the boy

March 08--The Cook County Jail inmate charged with shooting 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee laughed as he described luring the boy from a playlot and shooting him, prosecutors alleged Tuesday.

Dwright Boone-Doty was secretly recorded by another inmate talking about the coldblooded killing, law enforcement sources said. Prosecutors said Boone-Doty was out to avenge an earlier killing and shooting in a long-running gang war.

Boone-Doty told the other inmate that he originally planned to kidnap and torture the child by cutting off his fingers and ears, said Assistant State's Attorney George Canellis Jr. He also conducted surveillance on Tyshawn's grandmother so he could kill her and draw out rival gang members, he said.

Boone-Doty lured Tyshawn out of a playlot by asking him if he wanted to go to the store, according to Canellis. When the boy said he had no money, Boone-Doty said he would buy him whatever he wanted, the prosecutor said.

Canellis said Boone-Doty laughed as he described to the other inmate how he shot Tyshawn in the head.

"Shorty, he couldn't take it no more," Boone-Doty allegedly said.

Tyshawn's mother left the courtroom before the bond hearing began at the Leighton Criminal Court Building and could be heard screaming outside.

A judge ordered Boone-Doty held without bail for the slayings of Tyshawn and a 19-year-old woman weeks earlier.

Boone-Doty appeared in a packed courtroom in an orange jumpsuit with his hands and legs in shackles surrounded by five sheriff's deputies and a sheriff's supervisor.

The recordings helped lead to first-degree murder charges against Boone-Doty for his alleged roles in the killing of Tyshawn and the Oct. 18 killing of 19-year-old Brianna Jenkins, the sources said.

Authorities allege that Boone-Doty, 22, was the gunman in Tyshawn's slaying.

The informant told authorities that Boone-Doty, in jail after his arrest in November on unrelated gun charges, had talked to him about killing the 9-year-old, the sources said.

Chicago police detectives then obtained a court order for the informant to wear a wire and record Boone-Doty, the sources said. The recordings captured him implicating himself in both killings, according to the sources. The FBI also assisted in the undercover operation, sources said.

Police have said Tyshawn was targeted in early November because of his father's gang ties and a series of shootings between two rival gangs in the Auburn Gresham community.

Tyshawn's slaying again put Chicago in the national spotlight for its unflattering reputation for runaway violence. Days after the killing, then-Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy called it "probably the most abhorrent, cowardly, unfathomable crime" he had seen in his 35 years in law enforcement.

Tyshawn, a fourth-grader at Joplin Elementary School, was walking to his grandmother's house shortly after 4 p.m. when police said he was lured to the alley in the 8000 block of South Damen Avenue and shot repeatedly. A basketball that he always carried with him was found nearby.

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 community with ties to two of Chicago's most historic gangs -- Killa Ward of the Gangster Disciples and Terror Dome of the Black P Stones.

Police believe the Terror Dome faction targeted the child because his father, a convicted felon, reputedly belongs to the Killa Ward faction.

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 about 6 a.m. inside a car at 75th Street and Damen Avenue.

Two months later, Tracey Morgan, a reputed Terror Dome member, was shot and killed in the 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 the 19-year-old Jenkins.

In addition to the murder charges, Boone-Doty was charged with attempted first-degree murder and aggravated battery in the October shooting, said Sally Daly, a spokeswoman for Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez. While incarcerated, Daly said, Boone-Doty picked up another gun charge in a separate case.

He had been paroled from the Illinois Department of Corrections after serving about two years on a five-year sentence in a drug case. Jenkins was killed about two months after Boone-Doty was paroled and Tyshawn was killed three weeks after Jenkins.

Boone-Doty had two prior weapon convictions for which he served time in Illinois prisons.

In late November, murder charges were filed against Corey Morgan, 27, Tracey Morgan's brother, for his alleged role in Tyshawn's killing. On Nov. 16, Boone-Doty was arrested along with Corey Morgan on the unrelated gun charges in the southwest suburbs. A third suspect, Kevin Edwards, 22, is at large with a warrant out for his arrest in the killing.

All three suspects are alleged members of Terror Dome, authorities have said.

jgorner@tribpub.com

sschmadeke@tribpub.com

Twitter @SteveSchmadeke

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