Gang rivalry causes deadly summer in Wilmington
A rash of teen shootings this summer in Wilmington has been fueled by a deadly rivalry between two street gangs – Shoot To Kill and Only My Brothers – leading authorities to arrest in the last two weeks 20 of 22 young men charged in a sweeping indictment, prosecutors said.
The indictment comes just over a week after authorities charged three alleged members of the STK gang with the slaying of 15-year-old Brandon Wingo. This indictment is against OMB.
All of the men, ranging from 16 to 21, are charged with gang participation – which has been used frequently since the Delaware Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality in 2013. It allows the state to charge a group of three or more persons who share an affiliation that includes a criminal activity.
Some also face additional charges for offenses including showing a weapon, illegally carrying firearms such as a MAC-11 pistol, conspiring with others to commit a shooting, assault with a firearm and drug dealing.
What is most alarming, prosecutors said, is that the shootings are not fueled by the typical gang wars over turf and drugs. Instead, social media is spawning a new environment where an insult that goes "viral" online prompts deadly retaliation.
Following the flurry of arrests, parents of the young men want hard answers about precisely why their children are behind bars.
"How can you have a secret indictment on kids," asked Marcia Johnson whose 16-year-old son Theodore was charged. "My son had no clue what was going on."
"I'm confused and upset – both," she said at a gathering of parents Thursday night. "And then to have this indictment and you guys [police] been looking at these kids for months. I mean somebody could have said something to the parents."
Even before the indictment was made public, teens all over New Castle County took to social media to spread the news about who has – and has not – been arrested. Lists showed up online of the street names of those who they want freed.
The indictment, made public late Thursday after being sealed, shows authorities have been rounding up the young men for weeks. Two of the men still remain at large, according to Gregory Patterson, chief of staff to Attorney General Matt Denn.
The grisly Wilmington feud highlighted in the indictment underscores evidence uncovered by a News Journal investigation of court documents, interviews with scores of residents and social media postings. Pictures of teens toting high-powered firearms and tributes to "BWingoWorld" and "#OMB" are common on Facebook and Twitter.
On the street, an insult to one's pride can pit loosely affiliated street crews with access to new, illegally obtained weapons against one another, authorities said. Youthful indiscretion fuels the seemingly random nature of the attacks.
"They're loyal and they defend each other," said Deputy Attorney General Mark Denney. "It doesn’t matter how small the insult is, how stupid the affront is to the group or the individual. They’ll just pull out a gun and shoot.”
“They’re not the local chapter of national Brand X,” Denney said. “The business isn’t drugs so there isn’t a hierarchy. It’s just actually a group of people that like to shoot."
A summer of gunfire
The result is soaring violence. Eighty-six people have fallen victim to gunfire this year – 16 of whom have died from injuries.
This summer also appears to be more dangerous than last.
Gunfire has erupted 26 times since June 20. At the same time last year, 21 shootings had occurred. The numbers have continued to increase as the years passed, though Wilmington police say they are on par with nationwide statistics. Many say the hot weather draws people outside, making for more potential victims on the streets.
The most recent victim was 15-year-old Tyreek Scott, who was shot and killed late Monday in the area of 11th and Bennett streets. His death marked the 20th juvenile to be shot in the city in 2016. Nearly one-quarter of all shooting victims in the city this year have been minors.
About eight blocks away, Wingo was shot three times as he walked along Clifford Brown Walk in May. Pictures on social media indicate Scott was friends with Wingo and share the same close-knit group of friends.
While Scott's shooting remains unsolved, Wingo's death led to the first major gang indictment of the year.
In that indictment, three men – Kevon Harris-Dickerson, 20, of Newark; Zaahir Smith, 19, of Newark; and Diamonte Taylor, 18, of Wilmington – were charged by a grand jury in Wingo's death and various other felony charges.
The indictment indicates that in the days before and after Wingo's shooting, at least seven other people, many of whom appear to be close to Wingo, were also assaulted, threatened, robbed and shot at. Police and state prosecutors believe the three men are members of the STK gang.
The OMB indictment days later names those accused of participating in the rival gang. The defendants listed are Azhe Allen, 18, Nakeem Bailey, 16, Dante Cooper, 17, Shaka Dorsey, 17, Anthony Fistzgiles, 17, Kyaire Henry, 17, Oliver Henry, 18, Jabri Hunter, 18, Theodore Johnson, 16, Raquan Jordan, 18, Jahlil Lewis, 16, Na-quan Lewis, 19, Jovan Martin, 18, Stephan Minus, 17, Arvel Nesmith, 17, Naseem Parks, 16, Artie Pratt, 18, Malik Purnell, 20, Jahdi Rainey, 18, Zakier Smith, 16, Donald Tillman, 21, and Tavion Washington, 17.
"The Attorney General’s Office, in conjunction with the Wilmington Police Department in this case and assisted by numerous federal and local agencies, continues to aggressively prosecute the violent gangs plaguing the city of Wilmington," Patterson said in a statement Thursday. "The indictment of 22 OMB gang members handed down by the grand jury further exemplifies this aggressive approach."
Parents band together
At the prompting of a couple of parents of the young men, Wilmington Rev. Derrick Johnson, known as Pastor D, called a meeting Thursday evening at Joshua Harvest Church to talk about the indictment. About 20 parents and relatives attended.
They said they were told the indictment was sealed and they couldn't access it, causing frustration for many who said they didn't know where their sons were even being held.
Robert and Marcia Johnson said about 10 officers wearing helmets and bullet-proof vests raided their house in Holloway Terrace near New Castle about 5:45 a.m. on July 11 searching for their 16-year-old son Theodore, who was not there.
Police with guns drawn ordered Marcia and her daughter out of their house, Marcia Johnson said, then handcuffed Robert and after questioning him, took him outside still handcuffed.
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Officers kept asking where their son was. When the parents asked what this was about, one of the officers threw the arrest warrant at them, she said.
Police searched the home for about 30 minutes taking several items from their son's room and left telling the parents to have their son turn himself in because "it might get ugly if we get him," Marcia Johnson said.
After finding and feeding their son, they took him to the Wilmington police station where he and several of his friends were being arrested, the Johnsons said.
The parents said they've tried to learn more about why their son was arrested. One of the few things they were told was that he was being charged with gang participation.
They do not believe their son is involved in a gang, adding that he just has friends all over Wilmington. Others parents said the same Thursday.
"If it's a gang, then my son belongs to all the gangs in the city because he gets along with everybody," Robert Johnson said.
Derrick Johnson, who is working for the mayor's office as a gang intervention specialist, encouraged parents to band together and contact Denn.
Outreach Worker Shawn Mitchell, with Cease Violence, an organization devoted to mitigating violence within the city, said he met with many of the boys charged this week and is now looking to deter further violence. Though he didn't get into specifics, he stressed that the violence and the involvement in gangs is more widespread than many believe, especially in Wilmington.
But he doesn't believe that all of these charges are legitimate.
"The majority of these young men were chilling [hanging out]," he said.
Street crews take hold
State Prosecutor Kathleen M. Jennings said they are seeing more street crews, or what prosecutors call loosely affiliated gangs, recently. These can be just as dangerous as the more traditional organized gangs that have structured leaders and rely on drug dealing.
“There is a difference and different ways that they operate and different ways that they commit crimes,” Jennings said. “All of which ends up being violent because of the nature of their enterprise or just the nature of their association.”
Bringing these street crews to prosecution has become more common over the past few years following a 2013 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the anti-gang statute.
The ruling came in an appeal by Kevin Rasin and Marc Taylor, two members of the Trapstars – a Wilmington rap group turned drug gang – who were convicted last year on a number of charges including gang participation.
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The charge allows the state to criminally prosecute “any ongoing organization, association, or group of three or more persons, whether formal or informal” that have one of its primary activities relate to crime, according to state code. They must also use a common identifying symbol or name and show a pattern of this criminal behavior.
Both alleged that the state's statute was unconstitutionally vague and overly broad in that it infringes on the right to freely associate. The justices said this argument lacked merit and concluded that a "person of ordinary intelligence can understand what it means to actively participate in a criminal street gang's criminal conduct, and there is no constitutional right to assemble for the purpose of committing a crime."
The justices noted that similar challenges to nearly identical gang laws in states such as California, Ohio, Georgia and Colorado have failed.
Under the statute, 13 members of the Touch Money Gang were indicted in September 2015 on 91 charges, including murder. State Attorney General Matt Denn said the participants, ranging in age from 15 to 23, were the cause of years of violence in the city, causing many to fear for their lives in Wilmington.
The indictment linked the men to six slayings, five shootings and a bank robbery, as well as others. The case has not yet gone to trial.
At least two people named in the most recent OMB indictment have a link to Wingo or one of the STK gang members charged with fatally shooting Wingo on May 19, according to court documents.
Contact Jessica Masulli Reyes at (302) 324-2777, jmreyes@delawareonline.com or Twitter @JessicaMasulli. Contact Esteban Parra at (302) 324-2299, eparra@delawareonline.com or Twitter @eparra3. Contact Brittany Horn at (302) 324-2771 or bhorn@delawareonline.com. Follow her on Twitter at @brittanyhorn.