FEDERAL PROSECUTORS TIE FOUR CORNER HUSTLERS TO 3 MORE KILLINGS
Seconds before a brazen, fatal midday shooting seven years ago, the feds say a man popped out of a car near Avers Avenue and Ohio Street, covered his face with his shirt and offered a warning:
“If y’all don’t get out of here, we’re about to come and spray.”
Moments later, gunshots erupted in the 600 block of North Avers Avenue in what prosecutors now say was a retaliatory killing by members of the Four Corner Hustlers street gang.
The gang is already connected in a ninecount racketeering indictment to six murders between 2000 and 2003. But in a detailed 110-page document filed late Friday, prosecutors have tied the gang to three additional killings in 2012.
The Four Corner Hustlers spent decades building and expanding a drug operation on the West and Southwest sides, according to the feds. Several members of the group face a sweeping street-gang trial starting in September at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse. Three additional members who could face the death penalty are set for trial in 2020.
The new document does not name the three murder victims, but they appear to include Cornell Ferguson and Johnqualus Turner, both 16, who were gunned down Aug. 2, 2012, in the 600 block of North Avers. The remaining murder took place July 2, 2012. However, the document offers few details about it.
All three appear to have been retaliatory shootings. Prosecutors said the murder in July 2012 followed the shooting of the brother of Four Corner Hustler Rontrell Turnipseed. They say Labar “Bro Man” Spann — alleged to be the self-declared Four Corner Hustlers “chief ” — ordered Turnipseed and Marchello Devine to shoot the rival gang member who shot Turnipseed’s brother.
Meanwhile, the Aug. 2, 2012, shooting followed the Aug. 1, 2012, murder of Dominique “Snoopy” Green, an associate of the Four Corner Hustlers. Speaking with law enforcement in 2016 about Green, Four Corner Hustler Keith Chatman admitted he cried for two days following Green’s death, prosecutors said.
Chatman told authorities that Green’s killer shot Green 11 times, including in the head.
The shooting that claimed the lives of Ferguson and Turner followed the next day, records show. Prosecutors said the Four Corner Hustlers held two rival gang members responsible for Green’s murder and targeted their drug-selling operation in the 600 block of North Avers.
The gunfire erupted around 12:50 p.m. on a weekday, thirty seconds after a witness was warned “we’re about to come and spray.”
The feds say a white van carrying Spann and two other Four Corner Hustlers blocked traffic while Chatman and fellow gang member Justin Cook allegedly opened fire from inside a black Nissan sedan. Chatman allegedly fired an “AK-47-style assault weapon” from the rear passenger seat while Cook shot a handgun from the front passenger seat.
A third victim was shot in the leg but survived the shooting, records show.
Later, Spann allegedly complained that they were supposed to wait to open fire until they saw one of the rival gang members he held responsible for Green’s death.
Chatman allegedly said, “F--- ’em, they can’t work out there no more.”