A West Pullman man is charged with shooting a teenage girl twice in the face last year during a dispute over a parking space on the Far South Side.
Kenneth Hardy, 48, faces a felony count of aggravated battery with a firearm for allegedly firing the stray shots that hit 16-year-old Deija Nesbitt, according to Chicago police and her family.
Hardy was extradited from Ohio to Chicago earlier this week and ordered held without bail during a Friday hearing, police and Cook County prosecutors said.
Hardy was charged in the shooting in late January after he was identified as the man who fired gunshots during an argument June 16, 2019, in the 1100 block of West 110th Place in Morgan Park.
Deija’s mother, Brandie Clark, told the Sun-Times after the shooting that Hardy had parked in a disabled parking spot meant for a 97-year-old woman.
“My brother told him he needed to move it,” Clark said, but Hardy allegedly began to argue and said he would move it when he felt like moving it.
When Clark’s mother got involved and told him to move his car, he swatted her hand away, leading Clark’s brother to punch the man in the face.
Clark said the man had been over to the home before and his actions were out of character. But what came next was a complete surprise.
Clark said he went to his car, got a gun and began firing at her brother, who ran. As the man continued to fire, Deija, who was sitting in a car out front, turned her head to look at where the shots were coming from. That’s when the window burst and she was struck twice in the face.
“He almost destroyed my daughter’s and my family’s life over some foolishness,” Clark said then.
Deija was in the hospital for five days, and a bullet fragment remains lodged in her cheek. Another bullet, which entered above her jaw, fractured a vertebra in her spine and is too dangerous to remove.
After the shooting, Clark called on Hardy to turn himself in, saying it was “time for him to take responsibility.”
Clark could not be reached for comment Friday.
Hardy is due in court again March 13.
Contributing: Matthew Hendrickson
