2 Boys Charged in Gang Execution of 11-Year-Old

CHICAGO — The tragic cycle of youthful violence that claimed the lives of 14-year-old Shavon Dean and Robert Sandifer Jr., the hardened 11-year-old suspect in her murder, came full circle Friday as Chicago police charged two teen-age brothers in the boy’s execution.

Early Friday morning, detectives arrested Craig Hardaway, 16, and his unidentified 14-year-old brother at their home in Roseland, a community of ramshackle frame houses on Chicago’s South Side. First-degree murder charges were filed against the pair in the killing of Sandifer, whose body was found Thursday morning in a bloody mud puddle under a pedestrian viaduct less than a mile from his home.

Identified as members of the Black Disciples street gang, the two brothers are accused of shooting the younger boy on orders of a superior in the organization, police said. One of the brothers has confessed, said police Commander Earl Nevels, who is heading the investigation into the deaths of Dean and Sandifer.

Sandifer was killed because he “had brought too much heat on the gang, and they feared that he might expose and implicate higher-ups,” Nevels said.

Even as relatives and friends of the slain girl mourned at her funeral Friday and prayed that her death might galvanize gang members into reconsidering their lives, police said that the Black Disciples’ use of adolescents as triggermen has become a common feature of gang life here.

There are 5,000 Black Disciple members throughout the city, said George Knox, director of the National Gang Crime Research Center at Chicago State University. Of that number, 20% are younger than 13, while most of the gang’s “ministers”--those who run its decentralized fiefs--are in their 30s or 40s, Knox said.

“It’s tragedy upon tragedy upon tragedy,” said Cook County State’s Atty. Jack O’Malley, commenting on the tender ages of the suspects and their victims.

Sandifer, known as “Yummy,” had bragged about his affiliation with the Black Disciples since he was 10, neighbors said. Similarly, the two brothers accused of killing him had become members at 10, a law enforcement official said.

Craig Hardaway had no criminal record until this year, when he was arrested in a series of incidents. In May, according to officials, Hardaway was released by a juvenile judge after he was charged with attempted murder, discharging a firearm, aggravated battery and armed violence. A month earlier he had been placed on probation for auto theft and had also been arrested for narcotics distribution.

Detectives and neighbors said that in the two days after a stray shot believed to have come from Robert Sandifer’s gun killed Dean during an attempted drive-by shooting, the 11-year-old had been on the run.

Shepherded between safe houses and vacant dwellings by older gang members, the boy thought his friends were “going to get him out of town,” Nevels said.

At one point, the young suspect may have considered turning himself in to police, said Frances Middlebrooks, an elderly neighbor. In an account given to a Chicago television station, Middlebrooks said that Sandifer turned up on her porch Wednesday night but left with several youths.

About two hours later, shortly after midnight Thursday, the boy was driven by three Black Disciples to the darkened, graffiti-marred viaduct and coaxed out of the car. “He had no idea what was about to happen,” Nevels said.

Saying nothing, Nevels said, Hardaway allegedly fired a .25-caliber handgun twice into the back of the boy’s head.

Times researcher John Beckham in Chicago contributed to this story.