Dan Hinkel, Dawn Rhodes and Rosemary R. Sobol, Chicago Tribune –
A 26-year-old alleged gang member has been charged with the fatal shooting of Heaven Sutton, the 7-year-old girl who was selling candy with her mother near her North Austin neighborhood home moments before a stray bullet struck her in the back last week.
Jerrell Dorsey, of the 1600 block of North Laramie Avenue, was charged with first degree murder and aggravated battery with a firearm and was ordered held with no bond by Judge Adam Bourgeois Jr. in bond court Sunday, police said.
In a tense courtroom filled with Heaven Sutton’s family, Bourgeois angrily condemned those who carry guns on Chicago’s streets.
“You’re a dangerous individual,” Bourgeois told Dorsey. “You’re dangerous people. No bail.”
As a crowd of police ushered Sutton’s family from the courtroom, they shouted “You will not sleep!” and “I hope you die slow.”
A small group of Dorsey’s female family members declined to speak with reporters, and they were guarded by a phalanx of police as they walked away from the courthouse on California Avenue under a gathering storm that lashed the courthouse moments later.
Dorsey’s lawyer, Eric Dunham, said his client was in the area when Sutton was killed but that he was not the shooter.
“It’s a tragedy. He’s scared. He’s upset,” Dunham said.
Dunham said his client was planning to turn himself in but he was arrested before he could do so.
After court, Heaven’s family gathered outside the courthouse to cry and call for punishment for Dorsey. Sutton’s mother said authorities should protect Dorsey in the jail or he would not be safe.
Heaven’s mother, Ashake Banks, led her family away by saying, “We gotta go bury Heaven.”
As they walked down the front steps at the courthouse, one woman shrieked and burst into tears as she stomped her feet and cried, “He shouldn’t have did that. She could have been anything she chose to be.”
Dorsey was taken into custody about 11 p.m. Friday night by members of the Chicago police department’s fugitive apprehension unit and the U.S. Marshals fugitive task force as he tried to flee from the back of a building on the 5300 block of West Galewood Avenue, according to police.
He was identified by witnesses of the gang-related shooting that sparked frustration and outrage from Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other city officials who’ve been trying to control an outbreak of street violence in recent months.
“Bringing Heaven’s shooter to justice will not bring her back, but I hope it will provide some level of solace to her family,” Emanuel said in an e-mailed statement, moments after police Superintendent Garry McCarthy announced the arrest during a North Austin community meeting.
Heaven’s mother said Saturday she was indeed relieved by news of the arrest.
“I feel a little better,” Banks said, standing outside her home on the 1700 block of North Luna Avenue. Nearby, the “candy shop” she had set up as a way to keep neighborhood children out of local gang crossfire was now a fold-out table with a “Stop the Violence” sign and a cookie jar collecting cash donations for Heaven’s funeral.
“Maybe I can get a little rest tonight,” Banks said. “It’s a start.”
Police say tensions between two local gangs have been rising in the neighborhood.
A 19-year-old man who was shot in the ankle at the same time Heaven was killed is an alleged member of the Mafia Insane Vice Lords, who have been fighting with the Four Corner Hustlers, police say. Dorsey was charged with aggravated battery for his shooting, officials said.
Dorsey is believed to be a member of the Four Corner Hustlers, police sources say.
In recent years, he has pleaded guilty to marijuana possession and other minor crimes, records show.
“We know stuff is changing but it’s getting worse,” said Richard Harrington, Heaven’s uncle. “There are two, three parks near here that don’t have basketball hoops, nothing, so the kids are automatically going to be a target because they have nowhere to go.”
On Saturday, neighbors and family friends still struggled to make sense of how the lively girl who loved to jump rope, play video games and dress in pretty clothes could be suddenly gone.
“She used to make us all laugh,” her brother Diamante Demetrious, 12, said in a soft voice, his head bent down as he sat at a table with the funeral cookie jar.
He had written a message to his fallen sister on a white T-shirt that read: “Love you, lil’ sis. Love, never forgotten.”
On the gate nearby, Heaven’s name was spelled in big, silver balloons and a tree was decorated with flowers, balloons and stuffed animals.
Harrington said Heaven had gone to the mall with his family the day before she was killed and came away with an assortment of goodies in her favorite color: pink sneakers, pink socks and three scoops of pink ice cream.
“She was a real ‘girly’ girl,” he said with a smile.
Heaven was dressed in pink on the day of the shooting.
Just hours before it happened, she posed for a photo at the candy table, smiling in her floral print dress while playfully holding two wrapped “Sour Punch” licorice twists on each side of her face.
Displayed before her was a rainbow of candies, cookies and other promising summer treats.
Heaven’s funeral is scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday at St. Mark International Christian Church, 832 N. Leclaire Ave., in the South Austin neighborhood.
Tribune reporters Carlos Sadovi, Ryan Haggerty and Jeremy Gorner contributed.
