A Cook County judge ordered a Chicago man held without bail Friday after prosecutors accused him of firing a gunshot that left 21-month-old Kayden Swann critically wounded in a road rage confrontation on Lake Shore Drive near Grant Park.
Deandre Binion, 25, is charged with three counts of attempted first-degree murder and aggravated battery by discharge of a firearm in connection with the shooting on April 6.
Kayden was secured in a car seat behind his grandmother while her long-time boyfriend, Jushawn Brown, drove them to a relative’s home on the North Side around 11:06 a.m., Assistant State’s Attorney Kevin Deboni said in a bond court hearing before Judge Mary Marubio.
As their Lincoln sedan approached Roosevelt, Binion nearly ran into their back bumper because he could not get around them due to road construction, Deboni said. Brown leaned out of the Lincoln as the vehicles stopped for a red light and yelled for Binion to back off because there was a child in his car, according to Deboni.
The cars made their way north, and Binion pulled up on the passenger side of the family’s Lincoln with a pistol dangling from his hand, Deboni said. Brown then allegedly pulled his own gun from below his feet, displayed it, put it on his lap, and tried to speed away from Binion’s SUV.
Binion then fired several shots at the Lincoln, stopped his SUV, got out, and fired additional shots at the car before he escaped into the Loop and onto the expressway, Deboni said. One of the bullets he allegedly fired went through the Lincoln’s back passenger window, struck Kayden in the right temple and exited through the boy’s cheek.
Kayden is no longer in intensive care at Lurie Children’s Hospital, but he will need further treatment at a rehab center when doctors discharge him, according to Deboni.
Police tracked Binion down through the SUV’s license plate, which is allegedly associated with a rental car that his girlfriend leased. Brown and Kayden’s grandmother both identified Binion as the shooter in photo line-ups, Deboni said.
Investigators recently executed a search warrant at the home of Binion’s girlfriend’s mother. They found a handgun that is connected to shell casings found at the shooting scene, according to Deboni.
Binion’s private defense attorney, Mike Krejci, noted Kayden’s grandmother told the media that she blamed Brown for the entire incident and even said that Brown fired the first shots in the confrontation.
But Deboni said police found no bullet holes in Binion’s SUV, and all of the shell casings police found came from a 9-millimeter handgun. While Brown was charged with illegally carrying a handgun following the incident, his weapon was fully loaded when cops recovered it, and testing found no gunshot residue on his hands, according to Deboni.
Neither Binion nor Brown have criminal backgrounds, prosecutors said.
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