Four long months after being viciously shot by an armed robber in Lincoln Park, Dakotah Earley has finally made it home.
“It’s been a long day and night, hell it’s been a journey and God has made sure we can be here to tell the story. #DakotahEarley is home. 🙏,” his mother, Joy Dobbs, said in a tweet Friday night.
Dobbs previously said Earley expected to go home last month, but further medical treatments delayed those plans.
“He has been through so much and taking it all like a Rock Star,” Dobbs tweeted last month. “I said when this all began you would see God in all this. My son was not a full believer but God is so present in this moment.”
Earley, 24, moved to Chicago late last year to pursue a culinary job. He was walking home when an armed robber ambushed him at gunpoint on the corner of Wayne and Webster around 3:05 a.m. on May 6.
A nearby surveillance camera recorded the confrontation as Earley and the gunman fell to the pavement. Then, the robber shot him repeatedly at close range while demanding the password to his phone.
Dobbs flew into town and has been with her son nearly non-stop.
In May, off life support for less than a week and with his jaw wired shut, Earley was shown pictures of six possible suspects by Chicago police detectives who visited him in the hospital.
Unable to speak and with part of one leg amputated because of gunshot wounds, Earley circled the picture of 19-year-old Tyshon Brownlee and made a gun gesture with his hand, showing what Brownlee did to him, prosecutors said. They charged Brownlee with attempted murder and robbery of Earley plus four other armed robberies in Lakeview and Lincoln Park during May.
CWBChicago recently reported that Brownlee had been known to Chicago police detectives since November when two email addresses containing his name were linked to a string of violent robberies across the North Side.
Chicago cops spotted the robbery crew’s vehicle at least five times between November and the assault on Earley, but officers broke off their engagement each time. One of those police terminations occurred about an hour before Earley was shot.
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