Prosecutors say man in car with shot toddler didn’t fire back
Jushawn Brown (left) and Kayden Swann | Chicago police and Legal Help Firm
CHICAGO - A man who was behind the wheel when a child was wounded in a road-rage shooting on Lake Shore Drive was hit with a felony gun charge for possessing a weapon without state identification, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting.
Contrary to what police initially reported, prosecutors said Jushawn Brown did not return fire during Tuesday’s shooting.
Brown, 43, was found with a handgun when police officers asked whether he had "anything he wasn’t supposed to have" while at Northwestern Memorial Hospital on Tuesday, where the 1-year-old boy was taken after being shot in the head, the Sun-Times reported.
Prosecutors initially described Brown as the wounded boy’s grandfather, but a spokeswoman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office later clarified that he’s "in a relationship" with the boy’s grandmother.
Brown told the officers about the gun, which he called his "protection," and allowed the officers to take the loaded 9 mm handgun from him, prosecutors said.
Shell casings recovered at the scene of the shooting did not match the gun.
Brown was released from custody later Thursday after posting a $500 bail.
Kayden was critically wounded late Tuesday morning as he rode the back seat of a car on Lake Shore Drive. The shooting apparently followed a dispute over one car not letting another car into a lane of traffic just south of Soldier Field, police said.
Gunfire broke out as the cars continued to travel north, police said. Kayden was shot in his temple and rushed to the hospital by a bystander. He was placed in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator to protect his brain.