Two Teens Charged With Killing Fenger High School Students On Far South Side
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Two teenagers charged as adults were ordered held without bail on Sunday, accused of killing two longtime friends, and leaving their bodies in a field on the Far South Side. Kahlil Colone, 16, and Leslie Ward, 17, both have been charged with two counts first-degree murder in the August slayings of 16-year-old Raysuan Turner and 17-year-old Darnelle Flowers.
Turner and Flowers, both students at Fenger High School, were found shot and killed on Aug. 19, in a wooded area near 130th and Eberhart, near Golden Gate Park.
At a bond hearing Sunday afternoon, Cook County prosecutors said the victims and the suspects and the alleged killers had known each other for years, but that Colone and Ward lured Turner and Flowers to Golden Gate Park on Aug. 17, planning to kill them.
Prosecutors said a witness heard Colone and Ward planning the murders, saying they "had money on their heads." Prosecutors did not explain what that meant. Ward allegedly gave that witness a bag containing a handgun after the murders, and told the witness to hide it and say nothing, or be killed.
On the day of the shooting, Colone and Ward had arranged to meet Turner and Flowers at the park, where two witnesses who knew the defendants saw them enter a wooded area with the victims, but didn't see Turner and Flowers alive again.
Assistant Cook County State's Attorney Daniel Crone said, a short time later, Colone walked back to the park, and handed two cell phones to the witnesses, before returning to the wooded area. That's when the witnesses heard several gunshots.
Those witnesses ran away, but met with Ward the next day, and gave back the phones. Ward allegedly told the witnesses to forget he and Colone had ever been at the scene, according to Crone.
Turner's and Flowers' bodies were found two days after the shootings, after Turner's mother reported him missing. Autopsies determined Flowers was shot in the back of the head, the left shoulder, and the right cheek; and Turner was shot twice in his back, and once in his abdomen.
Crone said an Illinois State Police analysis determined both victims were shot with the same gun, either a .357 or .38-caliber handgun.
A judge ordered Ward and Colone held without bail, and were due back in court on Monday.