More than a dozen alleged members of the Latin Kings gang are facing decades in prison after being accused of a string of attacks that left victims mangled, including an attempted scalping around the corner from Mayor DeBlasio’s Park Slope home.
District Attorney Ken Thompson and police chief William Bratton announced a sweeping indictment against 14 supposed affiliates of the “Outlaws tribe” of the street gang who they say used Bushwick and East New York as the home base for a murder plot and a series of brutal assaults targeting seven members of rival so-called “tribes.” The charges include conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit assault, gang assault, weapons charges, and witness intimidation. Ten of those accused were arrested last Wednesday and four others are already incarcerated, according to prosecutors. Thompson said the streets are safer thanks to the sweep.
“We must protect the community from these senseless acts of bloodshed which were committed supposedly to enforce the Latin Kings manifesto,” he said.
The bloodshed, all of it orchestrated or boasted about on Facebook, began on Sept. 27, 2013, when prosecutors say one of the defendants arranged an 11 pm rumble with the Hardbody faction of the Kings on Hardbody turf at Fifth Avenue and 12th Street, just more than a block from the house Hizzoner and his family occupied until decamping to Manhattan in June. Once there, the Outlaws set upon four Hardbodies, but reserving special malice for one, who they stabbed in the back and “nearly scalped,” the District Attorney’s Office said.
“It was like someone had dumped a bucket of blood on his head,” a witness told DNAinfo at the time. The website’s report states all four were stabbed.
The following day, the accused ringleader taunted the Slope gangsters on Facebook, according to prosecutors.
“Guess n—– bodies aren’t so hard after all. F— with a real lion and get eaten,” he allegedly wrote. “Shout outs to the surgeons making that overtime pay . . Ur welcome.”
The same defendant continued his social media braggadocio five days later by posting a picture of the Spartans of Ancient Greece standing before a pile of dead bodies, accompanied by a taunt, an indictment states. The post was followed shortly by a photo of a victim in a hospital bed with the caption “the new and improved version,” the district attorney said.
The following month, the accused stabbed two members of the Jamaica Maya faction in Queens, law enforcement officials said.
The threats continued through the fall and winter, with multiple Outlaws exchanging taunts with Queens rivals in the Jamaica Maya, Woodhaven Maya, and Loyalty Shadow tribes on Facebook, prosecutors said. The posts included written raps and photos and videos shot of Outlaws brandishing weapons on enemy turf, in one saying that their enemies were “about to get chitty chitty bang bang night night,” according to a criminal complaint.
In one social-media collaboration early this year, the alleged ringleader text-messaged an alleged foot soldier to request a photo of his gun for a sinister collage he was making to post on another accused member’s wall as a declaration of war, the complaint states.
A Facebook missive from another member read, “Ppl just don’t understand that Facebook could get them seriously hurt in the real world,” per prosecutors.
On March 25 of this year, the alleged fiends lured a member of the Woodhaven Maya faction to Bushwick using a fake Facebook persona, prosecutors said. When the target arrived at the house on Van Buren Street between Bushwick Avenue and Broadway, they stabbed him in the head, stabbed him in the body, and shot him, leaving him in a coma for weeks, according to the authorities.
Four days later, the alleged head of the crew arranged a gun or knife fight with a rival, who opted out of a proposed gun fight because he had a broken hand, investigators said.
Finally, in April, May, and June, one of the defendants, having heard reports that a rival was snitching, sent a series of threatening Facebook messages to the man’s friends urging quiet, prosecutors said.
“He got my bros facing mad time,” the suspect supposedly wrote. “I hope he doing the right thing u know.”
The suspects were arraigned on Wednesday and the alleged ringleader was held without bail. The bail status of the others was not immediately clear. Each defendant faces as much as 25 years in prison if found guilty on the most serious count.
