A 28-year-old father injured in a Monday shooting that also killed his daughter was released from the hospital Thursday.

Jonathan Watkins stood silently as Pastor Corey Brooks, who has been acting as the family's spokesman, spoke to reporters outside the 5th District police station shortly after 9:30 p.m. Brooks said Watkins wished to "fully" cooperate with authorities and dispel misinformation that's been reported this week. He didn't offer specifics.

"His wounds haven't even healed yet and he's in a lot of pain and so we're going to go in and whatever the police need to know that he may know, we want to make sure that he fully commits himself to letting them know that," said Brooks.

Police said Jonathan Watkins told them he was changing the diaper on his 6-month-old daughter, Jonylah Watkins, on Monday when someone came up behind him and started shooting. Sources told NBC Chicago on Wednesday police had their doubts about that story.

Read the original story at NBCChicago.com

The girl suffered multiple injuries to her little body and died the morning after the shooting. A medical examiner source told NBC Chicago the damage to her thigh, shoulder, lung live and bowels may have been caused by a single bullet.

Jonathan Watkins, police said, has ties to the Gangster Disciples and has an extensive criminal record. Police records show he's been arrested 39 times and was likely the shooter's intended target. Numerous weapons violations and an attempt to steal his car back from police after it was impounded are among the previous charges against the father.

"He paid for his crime. He's fine with that. We're not trying to hide from that. We're not ducking and dodging from that," Brooks said Thursday night. "But that's not the issue. The issue is a baby got shot and killed and we need everybody to stay on point and stay on focus on what happened."

Gang violence claims 6-month-old baby even as homicides fall in Chicago

Jonylah Watkins' funeral has been scheduled for March 19. Brooks said basketball star Derrick Rose has offered to pay for the services.

An $11,000 reward stands for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the shooter.

Even in a city with more than 500 homicides a year, it's a crime that shocks the senses: a 6-month-old Chicago girl fatally shot five times while having her diaper changed in the family van.

Shootings and murders are down dramatically from the same point last year, when Chicago had more homicides than any other metropolis in the country, but that statistic means nothing to those mourning Jonylah Watkins.

The infant died Tuesday morning after several surgeries to repair injuries from five bullets that tore through her body the previous afternoon, family spokesman Pastor Corey Brooks said.

"The city of Chicago should be outraged that a 6-month-old baby could be shot and killed in our city," Brooks told NBCChicago.com. "It's horrific."

It appears the baby's father, who has an extensive criminal history, was the target, said Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, who added that the shooting has "very strong gang overtones."

"This is another tragedy, because no child, certainly not an infant, should be a victim of gun violence," McCarthy said at a press conference.

The father, Jonathan Watkins, 28, was shot in the buttocks and the face and was in stable condition Tuesday.

"I was trying to help her,” he told the Chicago Sun-Times after learning his daughter had died. "They told me she didn’t make it."

Gang violence has fueled the bloodshed in Chicago, which ended 2012 with 506 homicides on the books even as overall crime took a downturn.

Family photo

Jonylah Watkins

It was a gang turf war that led to another notorious slaying, the shooting of 15-year-old high-school majorette Hadiya Pendleton just days after she performed during President Obama's inauguration weekend.

The circumstances of Pendleton's death -- an honor student marked for death after she unwittingly set foot on gang territory -- made her a face of the national gun-control debate and sparked a local crime crackdown.

Chicago cops say new tactics are yielding results: Murders are down 26 percent and shootings are down 19 percent in the first quarter of this year over the same period last year.

"There's going to be good days, and there’s going to be bad days," McCarthy said after confirming the baby's death. "Today is obviously a bad day.”

McCarthy said no witness to the shooting has come forward, echoing the frustration he expressed after Pendleton's murder, when cops pleaded for an end to the no-snitching credo of the streets.

Brooks offered a $5,000 reward.

"We're going to find who did this and make sure they are brought to justice...We're not going to be afraid. We're going to take back our neighborhood."

Jonylah's grandmother, Mary Young, said the child had been touched by gun violence even before birth, when her mother was grazed in the knee by a bullet while pregnant.

M. Spencer Green / AP

A makeshift memorial is seen in Chicago, Tuesday at the site where 6-month-old girl Jonylah Watkins, and her father were shot.

U.S. Coast Guard via AP

This July 2, 2011 photo provided by the U.S. Coast Guard shows Richard Belisle, second from left, and Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class James Hopkins, second from right, with James Wells, left, and Coast Guard Petty Officer 3rd Class Cody Beauford as they help erect a communications antenna on Shemya Island, Alaska. Belisle and Hopkins were slain in April 2012, and Wells reportedly has now been charged with their murders.

Authorities in Alaska have charged a suspect in the mysterious killing last year of two employees at a U.S. Coast Guard communications station in Kodiak, it was reported Friday.

NBC News’ Anchorage affiliate KTUU and the Anchorage Daily News both reported the charges Friday evening, citing a written statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The statement provided no detail on what led authorities to the suspect, identified as Kodiak resident James Michael Wells, KTUU reported. It simply said he had been charged with murder in the deaths of James Hopkins and Richard Belisle and is expected to appear in federal court in Anchorage next week.

Hopkins, a Coast Guard electrician's mate, and Belisle, a retired boatswain's mate and civilian employee, were found dead at the Coast Guard station on April 12, 2012.

KTUU reported in May that the FBI asked if anyone had seen two vehicles, a white 2002 Dodge Ram pick-up truck and a blue 2001 Honda CR-V. It said that vehicles matching the descriptions belonged to James and Nancy Wells of Bell Flats, a Kodiak Island town about 12 miles from downtown Kodiak, and that the FBI had searched the couple’s property.

Authorities declined to comment on the report. James Wells, a civilian rigger who worked alongside Belisle and Hopkins repairing antennas, told KTUU at the time. “It’s our policy not to talk to anybody.”

The communication station, which monitors May Day air and maritime traffic, is about two miles from the main Coast Guard base on Kodiak, an island about 250 miles southwest of Anchorage. About 6,300 people live in the island's main town of Kodiak, where the base is located. The base has about 1,000 Coast Guard personnel and several hundred civilian employees.

David Woo / AP

At a news conference Thursday in Kaufman, Texas, Kaufman County Sheriff David Byrnes bows his head as District Attorney Mike McLelland answers questions about the slaying.

AP

Assistant district attorney Mark Hasse, 57, was shot to death Thursday in Kaufman, Texas.

The National Prosecutor Memorial in Columbia, S.C., lists the names of 11 prosecutors who were murdered in connection to their jobs, a testament to the rarity of such attacks.

In comparison to police officers, who suffer scores of on-duty deaths every year, prosecutors are relatively immune to deadly face-offs with criminals.

"They're not out on the street at 2 a.m. confronting people who are intoxicated, armed and violent," said Scott Burns, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association. "So when a prosecutor is killed, they are almost always premeditated attacks, which kind of raises the level of egregiousness."

The next name to be added to the monument will likely be Mark Hasse, assistant district attorney in Kaufman County, Texas, who was reportedly ambushed by one or two gunmen Thursday morning outside the courthouse where he worked. Hasse was the first DA to be murdered since Sean May, an Adams County, Colo. prosecutor, was shot outside his home in 2008.

The district attorney's association, which maintains the memorial, doesn't keep full historical records involving the killings of prosecutors; its list is almost entirely composed of murders that occurred since 1967, most of them committed by people whom the victims had put in jail or were trying to put in jail.

The only bygone case is William Foster, whose death in an epic gun battle at the Carroll County, Va., courthouse in 1912 has been recreated on stage, in books and through generations of oral retellings.

The list also does not include federal prosecutors. Dennis Boyd, who runs the National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys, said his organization was not aware of any federal prosecutors murdered while on the job or in an attack directly linked to their work. The one possible exception is Thomas Wales, who was shot to death in his Seattle home in 2001, a crime, like May's, that has not been solved.

But the NAAUSA's lawyer, Bruce Moyer, noted that threats against federal prosecutors have been rising in recent years. Citing data provided to him by the Department of Justice, Moyer said reported threats rose from 152 in 2005 to 208 in 2010. He could not say if any of the threats resulted in physical attacks.

Authorities say they do not yet know why Hasse, who prosecuted dozens of criminal cases each year, was shot to death outside Dallas.

But it seems that sometime in the near future, his name will be etched in bronze on that small monument in South Carolina.

Such deaths "strike at the very heart of our justice system," Burns said. "The number-one duty of the government is to protect the people, and these are people who are on the front lines, along with law enforcement officers and court personnel. They go to work every day trying to protect the rest of us and bring us a sense of order via the rule of law."

He added: "While every homicide and murder is egregious, there is something more outrageous about killing someone for being engaged in such an honorable calling."

Also on NBCDFW.com:

• Reward in Hasse's slaying up to $71,000
• Assistant DA Mark Hasse likely targeted in fatal shooting, police say

AP Photo/DuPage County Sheriff's Department

Elzbieta Plackowska in a booking photo provided by the DuPage County Sheriff's Department in Wheaton, Ill.

A Naperville, Ill., woman who allegedly stabbed her son 100 times and a girl 50 times told police there were "devils" inside the children that she needed to kill, according to a prosecutor.

At 40-year-old Elzbieta Plackowska's bond hearing Thursday morning, DuPage County State Attorney Robert Berlin explained Plackowska's alleged comments. "She stated the children had evil inside of them and she was trying to drive the devil out of them," Berlin said, according to NBCChicago.com.

Police say that on Tuesday Plackowska fatally stabbed her 7-year-old son Justin 100 times and 5-year-old Olivia Dworakowski 50 times, according to the Chicago Tribune. At the time, Plackowska was babysitting her son and the girl at Olivia’s home in Naperville, about 30 miles west of Chicago, the newspaper reported. She allegedly told the kids to kneel and pray before stabbing them, NBCChicago.com reported, and also told her son that he was going to heaven.

Prosecutors say both the kids' throats were slashed, the Tribune reported.

Watch US News crime videos on NBCNews.com

After the murders, Plackowska tried to go to a Naperville church but found it closed, so she left a message on its answering machine saying she had done something bad and needed assistance, Berlin said, according to The Associated Press. Covered in blood and with scratches on her hands, she went to a friend's home where her other, adult son was staying and told them that she had been robbed, Berlin said.

Prosecutors say Plackowska initially told police a stalker broke into the townhouse and committed the crimes, the Tribune reported.

Plackowska later told police that she stabbed her son to death to hurt her husband who "didn't appreciate her," according to NBCChicago.com. She said she killed the girl and two dogs because they witnessed the crime, NBCChicago.com reported.

Berlin said investigators found two blood-stained knives; one in the kitchen sink at the townhome and another in Plackowska's car, according to the AP.

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"In all my years in law enforcement, this is the most gruesome and horrific crime scene that I have seen," Naperville police Chief Bob Marshall said at the news conference, according to the AP.

Plackowska is being held without bond on two counts of first degree murder, NBCChicago.com reported. Berlin said Plackowska has no prior history of violence, the AP reported.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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A woman whose remains were found in the backyard of an Indiana man already charged with two other murders a decade apart apparently was strangled, according to news reports.

NBC station WAVE of Louisville reported Saturday that the remains found Friday in New Albany, Ind., were identified as those of 35-year-old Stephanie Marie Kirk, who disappeared in March. The Louisville Courier-Journal reported that Floyd County Coroner Leslie Knable said the preliminary cause of death was strangulation and it was uncertain how long she had been dead.  

"Relieved in a way," Kirk’s grandmother, Betty Kirk, told WAVE when asked her reaction. "Knowing that she's not tied up in a room somewhere held prisoner, or whatever. Now, she's in heaven with her mother."

The remains were found at the home of William Clyde Gibson, a registered sex offender charged in the death of 45-year-old Karen Hodella and 75-year-old Christine Whitis. Hodella disappeared in 2002, and her body was found early the next year. Whitis was found dead April 19 at Gibson’s mother’s home in New Albany. Gibson was arrested later that day.

Floyd County Prosecutor Keith Henderson said Friday that after Gibson’s arrest he implicated himself in the deaths of Hodella and Whitis, the News and Tribune of Jeffersonville, Ind., reported.

Kirk, of Charlestown, Ind., was last seen when she left a friend's house in New Albany on March 25, perhaps to meet a man to go motorcycling, WAVE reported. Betty Kirk said it was unlike her granddaughter, who had a teenage daughter, not to contact her father.

"I want her to come home,” her father, Tony Kirk, said this week, WAVE reported. “She's got a daughter. We both miss her. We both worry about her, can't sleep. Her daughter can't sleep."

Crews began digging in Gibson's yard Friday based on information they developed earlier in the day.

A next-door neighbor, Melodie Shultz, told the Courier-Journal that she had known Gibson since childhood and that he had been in trouble with the law off and on, but that he had always been willing to help out around the neighborhood.

“You never know who is living next door,” Shultz told the Courier-Journal.

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