Chicago — A 16-year-old boy and two adults are in custody for the slaying of 7-year-old Akeem Briscoe, who was killed by a bullet intended for someone else as he washed his hands inside his family’s Humboldt Park home last month.
Chicago Police Supt. David Brown said first-degree murder charges had been filed against the juvenile, but CPD’s chief of detectives, Brendan Deenihan, said investigators don’t believe he fired a gun during the shooting.
Police are working to secure murder charges against the adults from prosecutors in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, according to Deenihan. Brown said police had “work to do.”
The threesome walked through a gangway and shot at rivals who were sitting in a car in an alley behind the 2600 block of West Potomac around 8:20 p.m. on October 26. All of the intended targets escaped injury, but one bullet flew into Akeem’s home and struck the boy in the abdomen. He later died.
Akeem’s father died the week before he was shot following heart surgery, the Sun-Times reported.
“He said he didn’t want his dad to be gone, and he wanted to be with him,” the boy’s uncle Terribia Misters told the paper. “Now he’s where his dad’s at.”
Deenihan called the shooting “group on group violence.”
Detectives believe the 16-year-old carried a handgun and passed it to the adults, who fired it, resulting in Akeem’s death.
Investigators are “working really closely with the state’s attorney on those offenders as well,” Deenihan said during a Tuesday evening press conference.
The juvenile was 15-years-old at the time of the murder, and state law calls for his case to be heard in juvenile court, Deenihan said.
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