Man Sentenced On Gun Trafficking Charges Connected To Death Of Tyshawn Lee
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A Chicago man was sentenced to four years in prison on illegal gun trafficking charges, that lead to the gang-related shooting death of nine-year-old Tyshawn Lee in 2015.
According to sentencing memo from the United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Anthony Morgan, 32, had gotten guns, including the weapon used to kill Lee, through a straw buyer "distributed those guns amongst his brothers and friends, and then those guns were used in multiple shootings and crimes."
The guns were mailed to Morgan's home in Chicago from New Mexico, where they were purchased in four different transactions, according to the U.S. Attorney's office.
Morgan had no prior criminal history. But guns in his trafficking operation were used in other area crimes. The firearms were connected to three shootings, two homicides and one in the nine-year-old's death. Morgan admitted to being the source of firearms for a South Side gang.
"We a gang. We were gangbanging. I provided guns for the neighborhood because [I had] the connect," Morgan said.
Lee's father Pierre Stokes is believed to be a member of a gang that rivals Morgan's gang, and was suspected of being responsible for the October 13, 2015 murder of Morgan's brother, Tracey Morgan, who was killed three weeks before Tyshawn Lee.
Three men were ultimately charged in Lee's death. Corey Morgan, Kevin Edwards and Dwright Boone-Doty. Boone-Doty is the alleged gunman.
Tyshawn, who was in fourth grade, was shot multiple times at close range with a .40-caliber weapon, after being lured into an alley at 80th and Damen, near his grandmother's house, on November 2, 2015.
At his funeral days later, mourners remembered Tyshawn as a child who loved basketball and playing Xbox games.
"Tyshawn was creative, charming, helpful, and had an imagination out of this world," Joplin Elementary principal Alene Mason said.
Police have said Tyshawn was lured into the alley, and executed, because of his father's gang ties, and a series of shootings between rival gangs.
A gun that Morgan had purchased was also linked to the murder of a man on the North Side in January 2016.
Another gun that Morgan had sent from New Mexico was linked to a shooting that left two people wounded, and another still was recovered in Morgan's car after police responded to an emergency call of shots fired on the Fourth of July 2017, prosecutors said.
