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Brooklyn Gang Leader Convicted in 2015 Murder After Decade-Long Investigation
Date Posted: November 5th, 2026
A federal jury in Brooklyn has convicted a 37-year-old leader of the Cypress Gangsta Crips on all three counts against him. The counts were murder in aid of racketeering, causing death through use of a firearm, and possession with intent to distribute cocaine. The verdict came after a two-week trial in the Eastern District of New York. He now faces a mandatory life sentence. The FBI and NYPD investigated the case, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Organized Crime and Gangs Section prosecuted it.
The case goes back to February 2015. On February 19, a member of the gang was shot and killed while asleep in a Brooklyn apartment. Prosecutors said the gang’s leader at the time ordered the killing without the gang’s approval because he believed the victim was disloyal. The killing split the gang. Three days later, the defendant lured that leader out of an apartment building in Cypress Hills and drove him to a residential street in Canarsie. There, the defendant and another gang associate shot and killed him in retaliation for the earlier murder.
The evidence came together over several years. While incarcerated in 2016 and 2017, the defendant wrote a manuscript describing his motive for the killing and his membership in the Crips. Earlier court filings also described a recorded phone call on the day of the first murder in which he said he planned to kill the gang’s leader. In 2018, a federal judge sentencing him on separate gun and drug charges found that he had committed the killing. However, the murder charge did not come until December 2024.
Cases like this one show what sustained investigative work can achieve. The conviction is part of a decade-long investigation by the FBI, the NYPD, and the FBI/NYPD Metro Safe Streets Task Force, working with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. That investigation has led to charges against more than 20 defendants. Investigators connected communications, records, and relationships across a gang network over more than ten years. As a result, they established motive, mapped the gang’s internal conflict, and held a violent offender accountable long after the crime.
The Cypress Hills Houses, a public housing complex in East New York, have long been affected by violence tied to a feud between local Crips and Bloods-affiliated groups. For the residents who live there, this verdict closes one of the most violent chapters in that conflict. As FBI Assistant Director in Charge James C. Barnacle, Jr. put it, “Justice will find you.”
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