7 Accused of Murder in Chicago Beatings

Authorities charged seven people Saturday with killing two men who were stomped and beaten with bricks and stones when a mob attacked them after a traffic accident.

Each person was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of felony murder based on mob action and two counts of mob action in the deaths of Jack Moore, 62, and Anthony Stuckey, 49, said Jerry Lawrence, a spokesman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.

Robert Tucker, 20, and Antonio Fort, 16, were ordered held without bond Saturday. The other suspects--Henry Lawrence, 47; his brother, Roosevelt Lawrence, 43; Lamont Motes, 20; James Ousley, 31; and Ricky Lawson, 43--were scheduled to have bond hearings today, the spokesman said.

Saturday’s hearing came four days after a mob pulled two men from a van that had hurdled a curb and struck a group of people sitting on the stoop of a home in the Oakland neighborhood of the city. Three women were hospitalized after the crash.

As the injured lay on the ground, the mob beat Moore, who was driving, and Stuckey to death with their hands and feet, and bricks and stones, police said.

Tucker broke the driver’s-side window with his hands, punched Moore, pulled him out of the van and stomped on him, said Assistant State’s Atty. Megan Goldish.

She said Tucker gave a videotaped confession and had cuts on his arms that likely were caused by the broken window.

Fort, who was charged as an adult, allegedly helped pull Stuckey out of the van and kicked and beat him with a slab of concrete.

Fort’s lawyer, Lawrence Wolf Levin, said Fort plans to plead not guilty to the charges.

“If he was there, he was there to help [the injured],” Levin said of his client’s involvement. Fort was to begin his sophomore year in high school this fall.

Autopsies revealed that Stuckey, an unemployed day laborer and factory worker, and Moore died of multiple injuries and blunt trauma, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. Toxicology tests showed that Moore was legally drunk at the time of the crash, but police said that had no bearing on their investigation.

On Saturday, one of the three women hit by the van remained in the hospital. Shani Lawrence, 26, was in critical condition at Mount Sinai Hospital, according to a hospital spokeswoman.