Meet the teenage queen of Chicago's gangland (2024)

• Gakirah Barnes, 17, was associated with the Fly Boy Gang in Chicago's South Side since her early teens
• She is purported to have killed two rival gang members, one when she was just 14
  
• Some claim she was involved in up to 20 gangland deaths
• She was referred to in rap songs as 'Young Killa' and given the nickname 'Lil Snoop', in reference to the fictional assassin Snoop in TV series The Wire
• Barnes was gunned down on April 11 as she walked to lunch with a friend
• She was reportedly shot nine times in the chest, neck and jaw by a hooded gunman
  

By Joel Christie

Published: 13:24 EDT, 29 April 2014 | Updated: 05:55 EDT, 30 April 2014

To her mother, Gakirah Barnes was a funny and sweet charter graduate who loved music and 'was liked by everyone'.

But to the gangs of Chicago's notorious South Side, she was a 'young killa' who went by the names 'Tyquanassassin' and 'Tookaville’kirah', rumored to have committed her first murder at the age of 14.

Some claim she was involved in up to 20 gangland deaths.

But on Friday April 11, at 17-years-old, Barnes was gunned down as she walked to have lunch at a friend's house in Woodlawn about 3.30pm, shot a reported nine times in the chest, neck and jaw.

Some 45 other people were shot on the same weekend in the city that has come to be called 'Chiraq' - a brutal nickname used to describe today's Chicago in terms of its danger and crime - six of which were children.

But Barnes has since become something of a mythical figure online, immortalized in YouTube memorials and rap videos as 'Lil Snoop', a reference to the fictional 'Snoop' character from TV series The Wire - a cold-blooded killer from the harsh streets of Baltimore.

Barnes' father was shot to death on Easter Sunday in 1997, when she was less than 12-months old.

'She just wanted to protect everybody,' her mother, Shontell Brown, explained in a lengthy feature on Gakirah Barnes in The Daily Beast.

As Barnes entered her teens, she fell in with a group of young men in her South Side neighborhood of Woodlawn who called themselves the St. Lawrence Boys or the Fly Boy Gang.

Following the death of 15-year-old Shondale 'Tooka' Gregory, who was shot to death as he waited for a bus in January 2011, the Fly Boys became the 'Tooka gang' and the surrounding area 'Tookaville'.

Barnes changed her Facebook name to 'Tookaville' kirah'.

Eight months later, a 20-year-old opposing gang member named Odee Perry was shot and killed.

Barnes was almost immediately linked to the death, with online postings labeling her the 'hitta'.

She was 14-years-old at the time.

While Barnes was never named a police suspect, one street figure Tweeted: 'lol so odee was killed by a girl smh [shaking my head]'.

The opposing gang memorialized Odee by christening its home turf as 'O Block'.

A major turning point for Barnes was the killing of 13-year-old Tyquan Tyler, whose mother had moved him from Chicago to western Illinois to get him away from the city's violence.

He returned for a visit in June 2012 and was killed by a stray bullet when two gang members fired into a crowd of youngsters who were leaving a party.

Tyler's mother was on her way to pick him up.

'I held him in my arms on the sidewalk and talked to him while he was fighting for his life,' she told the Chicago Tribune.

Barnes grieved as if Tyquan had been her little brother and would often refer him as such online.

She adopted the vengeful Twitter handle 'Tyquanassassin' on his behalf.

'Tyquan supposed 2 Be hear wit me But instead Lil bro ended up 6 feet under a million miles away,' she Tweeted.

'Tyquan left a n--a Wit no heart no feelings.'

In July 2013, the Fly Boy Gang posted a music video on YouTube simply called 'Murda', with the main rap lyric: ' My young ni--as they're gonna murder.'

Barnes appears peripherally in most of the video, but takes center focus during the line 'K.I. my young killa'.

At one point she is seen holding an automatic pistol toward the camera, in others she is covering her face with a bandana.

The Fly Boy's were sending out a clear message with the video, attempting to get the attention of music producers and record labels who had recently taken a huge financial interest in gritty street rap performed by people who were actually 'living' their songs, and not writing about 'thug life' from a condo in Los Angeles.

Keith 'Chief Keef' Cozart, a member of rival gang Black Disciple - the O Block gang - had already been signed by Interscope, moving from the South Side to a mansion in the suburbs and recording songs that derided the Tooka clan.

On April 9, the 30-year-old cousin of Chief Keef, Mario 'Blood Money' Hess, was shot and killed.

Online postings would soon name Barnes, again, as the 'hitta'.

The police did not name her as a suspect, but she posted on Twitter the next day: 'u Nobody until Somebody kill u dats jst real Shyt.'

Around the same time, police shot and killed Raason 'Lil B' Shaw, a Tooka, after he allegedly pulled out a gun during a foot chase, according to The Daily Beast.

Barnes named her Twitter page 'NO SURRENDER LIL B.'

On April 10, the day before her death, she Tweeted: 'I Dne seen 2 many of my ni--az n a casket…In da end we DIE.'

That same day, a rapper named Lil Jay with the Fly Boy Gang taunted Blood Money's friends by posting a video of himself drinking a red-hued beverage from a Styrofoam cup, singing: 'Sippin' on Blood Money.'

The next day a hooded gunman approached Barnes 6400 block of South Eberhart Avenue, with the blast of bullets sending her falling onto some wooden steps, The Chicago Sun-Times reported.

'They killed my little ni**a snoop #restuptyqanaassassin,' a Fly Boy Gang associate tweeted.

Police have not named any suspects in Barnes' execution and no arrests have been made.

As Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube filled with stories of her, rumors and truths coming to light for the first time, Barnes' mother said she believes social media is is a huge part of the problem with the new-age gangland wars, because it provides a platform for boasting and derision that previously hasn't existed.

It can also make you famous.

'All those kids and rappers talk like Jesse James. Everyone wants to be the biggest and the baddest,' she said.

'This is life in Chicago.'