$1 million bond for woman charged with fatally shooting cousin
Tiera Graves | Chicago Police
CHICAGO (SUN TIMES MEDIA WIRE) - A Far South Side woman charged with fatally shooting her cousin during an argument Tuesday evening at their home in the Eden Green neighborhood has been ordered held on a $1 million bond.
Tiera Graves, 28, faces one count of first-degree murder, according to Chicago Police and the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.
About 7:20 p.m. Tuesday, Graves and her cousin, 21-year-old Marilyn Duffie, got into an argument about Duffie’s lack of cleanliness around the apartment they shared in the 300 block of East 130th Street and her actions around Graves’s son, prosecutors said.
Duffie cut her hand on a fish tank in the apartment and went next door to clean her wound, prosecutors said. She complained loudly about Graves, who confronted Duffie in the hallway.
They went outside and continued arguing, prosecutors said. Graves asked a witness to hold her phone so they could fight, but took her cellphone back.
The witness noticed a bulge in Graves’s waistband, but “didn’t think much of it because of the size of Tiera Graves,” prosecutors said.
Several witnesses left, believing the fight was not going to happen.
Within seconds of the witnesses leaving, Graves pulled out a handgun and fired one shot at Duffie, prosecutors said. Duffie collapsed in the front yard, and Graves went back inside the apartment.
Officers arrived at the scene and found Duffie with a gunshot wound to the chest, prosecutors said. A witness directed the officers to Graves’s apartment, and they saw her mopping up blood from the floor. She directed them to the gun, which was in a hallway closet.
Graves was arrested and admitted to shooting Duffie as Duffie grabbed her leg, prosecutors said.
Duffie was taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where she was pronounced dead at 9:37 p.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Judge Maria Kuriakos-Ciesil ordered Graves held on a $1 million bond Friday, according to the state’s attorney’s office. She is next scheduled to appear in court Nov. 9.