No bail for man charged with fatally shooting mother in cellphone store

CHICAGO (Sun-Times Media Wire) - Bail was denied Tuesday for a man accused of firing the stray bullet last month that fatally struck a mother as she shopped with her two children in a cellphone store on the Southwest Side.

Bryant Mitchell, 23, of the Ashburn neighborhood, is charged with first-degree murder and three counts of attempted first-degree murder in the slaying of Candice Dickerson in a Metro PCS store in Chicago Lawn, Chicago police and authorities said.

Mitchell and two other people, all members of the Satan Disciple gang, watched a person inside a silver Chrysler sedan sell someone marijuana  before the car left a parking lot near 59th Street and Kedzie Avenue shortly before 6:30 p.m. on April 26, according to Cook County court records.

Surveillance video shows Mitchell “false flagging” the occupants of the Chrysler by flashing a Latin King Crown gang sign, prosecutors said. Mitchell and his friends can then be seen in an alley tracking the Chrysler’s movements.

As the Chrysler was at 59th and Troy streets, Mitchell and the other two suspects ran south on Troy toward 59th, prosecutors said. Mitchell pointed a gun at the Chrysler and fired four shots at it.

One shot hit the rear window of the Chrysler but did not injure any of the occupants, prosecutors said. Two of the shots hit a nearby ambulance.

The fourth shot went through the window of the Metro PCS store in the 5900 block of South Kedzie and hit Dickerson in the face as she was shopping with her sons, ages 10 and 12, police and prosecutors said. She was taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where she died.

Detectives Monday night were questioning a person of interest who may have been a second shooter, a police spokesperson said.

Dickerson, who lived a few blocks away from where she was shot, was a “committed and beloved” pharmacy technician at Norwegian American Hospital, a spokesperson for the hospital said. She was also a single mother of three sons — ages 10, 12 and 17. Her two youngest sons were present at the shooting.

Mitchell was arrested May 4 after he was identified as the gunman, police said.

He was ordered held without bail during a hearing Tuesday at the Leighton Criminal Courts Building, 2650 S. California Ave. His next court date was set for May 22.