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A 20-year-old Chicago man with alleged gang ties was arrested Wednesday in the July 4th shooting death of 7-year-old Amari Brown, which sparked calls for gun reform from Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, reports The Chicago Tribune.

Rasheed Martin, 20, was arrested at a home in Superior, Wis., about 460 miles northwest of Chicago near the Wisconsin-Minnesota border, and charged with first-degree murder, the report says.

He is being held in the Douglas County, Wis., jail, and awaiting extradition to Chicago.

McCarthy has said that Antonio Brown, the child’s father who is an alleged Four Corner Hustlers gang member, was the suspect’s intended target. The child was with his father in the Humboldt Park neighborhood on the city’s Northwest Side spending time at his grandmother’s house for the Fourth of July holiday.

From The Chicago Tribune:

According to a law enforcement source familiar with the case, Martin may have been involved in an earlier dispute with the boy’s father, Antonio Brown.

The day after Amari was killed, McCarthy laid the blame for Amari’s killing on his father’s alleged gang involvement, saying Antonio Brown was a ranking gang member with 45 arrests and the apparent target of the late-night shooting. McCarthy blasted that Brown was released on $50,000 bail after his April arrest on a gun charge, saying, “If Mr. Brown is in custody, his son is alive.”

McCarthy offered no evidence that Antonio Brown had been the intended target in the shooting that killed Amari.

The Fourth of July weekend left 10 people dead and 55 wounded in the city. McCarthy says the violence is the result of lax gun laws. He called for more effective gun laws that put offenders behind bars for a long time.

SOURCE: Chicago Tribune | VIDEO SOURCE: NDN

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