Man on FBI’s wanted list is caught
Suspect in fatal South L.A. gun battle found only a day after being named top 10 fugitive.
A fugitive Jamaican gang member suspected of killing four people in a bloody gun battle at a popular South L.A. Jamaican restaurant was captured Friday, a day after he was added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.
Marlon Jones is believed to be the suspect in the shooting with rival gang members that also left 10 people wounded at an Oct. 15 party at a Caribbean restaurant inside a home. Jones was captured after a car chase with FBI agents on the 110 Freeway near the Adams Boulevard exit, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said.
The FBI Fugitive Task Force had received a tipon Jones’ whereabouts, she said.
The federal agency announced Thursday that it was offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to the capture of Jones, who is the 510th fugitive to be named to the list.
He was charged with four counts of murder, and a federal warrant was issued for his arrest after being charged with unlawful flight from prosecution.
Jones has a lengthy history of violence and belongs to a Jamaican criminal gang that operates on the East Coast, L.A. Police Department investigators said. The group is involved in largescale drug distribution, and Jones and other members may have come to L.A. to settle a dispute with rivals, authorities said.
Jones, who is a Jamaican national, had been living in New York, authorities said. He was in the U.S. illegally and was known to use a variety of aliases, including Rasheen Brantley, Floyd Evans Jr. and Junior. He operated in New Jersey, Connecticut, Tennessee and California, as well as the Caribbean.
The deadly gun battle in October erupted between two groups at a birthday party in the 2900 block of South Rimpau Boulevard. The house in which the killings occurred serves as a popular underground Jamaican eatery called Dilly’s Kitchen.
Jones and a second person, who police said fired into a crowd, fled before police arrived.
LAPD arrested two Jamaican nationals on suspicion of murder in connection with the shooting: They were found being treated for gunshot wounds at hospitals, said Capt. Peter Whittingham, the head of the South Bureau Criminal Gang Homicide unit.
In the wake of the gun battle, Mayor Eric Garcetti said the West Adams district shooting was “the latest example of a senseless gun violence epidemic that causes so much pain and sorrow in our city and across the nation.”
The FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list was established in March 1950. Since then, 478 fugitives have been apprehended or located, agency officials said.