By STEFANO ESPOSITO and ALEXANDRA KUKULKA
Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Police expand the crime scene where a 9-year-old boy was shot and killed in the 8000 block of South Damen on Monday. | Brian Jackson/for the Chicago Sun-Times
Nine-year-old Tyshawn Lee was fatally shot Monday afternoon in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood on the South Side.The boy was shot in an alley in the 8000 block of South Damen at 4:15 p.m., authorities said.
At a news conference at Chicago Police headquarters Monday night, Dean Andrews, chief of detectives, said the boy suffered multiple gunshot wounds to his upper body.
Andrews said an unknown number of people were arguing in the alley and gunfire followed.
Tyshawn Lee | photo courtesy of Karla Lee via CBS2
“At this point it is unclear if this was a targeted incident or a tragic case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said.
Tyshawn, who lived in the 2000 block of West 80th Street, was pronounced dead at the scene at 4:39 p.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
The boy’s grandmother, who did not want her name used, said she saw his body lying in the alley.
“He was always coming in and asking me for food,” she said. And he loved fried chicken and playing basketball.
“When an 8-year-old is gunned down multiple times in an alley, it sounds like an execution-style killing,” said the Rev. Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina Parish, who came to the scene near his church. “But what kind of creature are you, that you could shoot an 8-year-old multiple times?”
Saint Sabina is offering a reward of $20,000 for information leading to an arrest in the case.
Ambulances responded to the scene, but the boy was dead by the time they arrived, authorities said.
Andrew Holmes, a crisis responder for Chicago Survivors, said the boy was a student at Scott Joplin Elementary School.