Boy cleared of 1998 killing arrested in shooting probe

A BOY who won a $2 million (€1.58 million) settlement in the US after being wrongly accused of murdering an 11-year-old girl in 1998, has been arrested connection with a double shooting.

The boy, now 15, was allegedly caught with his older brother committing the crime on video surveillance, police said.

“He turned around and looked at the camera with a gun in his hand,” Commander Mel Davis told the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper. “It doesn’t get any clearer than that.”

One of the victims, whose name was not released, was on life support in hospital. The other victim suffered a bullet wound in the leg.

The shooting happened around noon last Wednesday at a petrol station. The victims were parked in a car when the 15-year-old allegedly approached the driver’s side door and his brother approached the passenger’s side, each holding guns, the police chief said.

In 1998 the boy, then aged seven, and another boy, then eight, were accused over the death in Chicago of Ryan Harris, making them the youngest murder suspects in the US at the time. They were cleared after tests showed semen on the girl’s clothing could not have come from the children.

DNA tests later led prosecutors to charge Floyd Durr, a convicted sex offender, who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.