Gangbangers nabbed in shootings & slays
More than a dozen gangbangers were arrested for their roles in a spate of shootings and killings in Brooklyn, including two cold-blooded slayings, the NYPD and the Brooklyn district attorney announced Wednesday.
The 18 young men — and a few teenage boys — are part of an umbrella group, the 900 Gang, that operated out of public housing complexes in Bedford-Stuyvesant, prosecutors said. The group would shoot at members of rival gangs on sight, purely to establish territorial dominance, according to investigators.
“There’s no active incident. No active dispute,” said Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, calling it a “senseless” cycle of violence.
Police and prosecutors used high-quality videos and search warrants for phones to help build cases in several Brooklyn shootings between April 2019 and November 2020.
The shootings spanned from Clinton Hill to Bushwick as the Bed-Stuy gang rivalries spilled into neighboring areas — leaving a trail of dead and wounded young men.
In one video taken Oct. 3, 2019, three 900 Gang members — James Alston, Shawn Singletary and Jalen Elliot — took part in a shooting that nearly killed a storekeeper in East Williamsburg. Alston shot at rival gang members, who scrambled off as bullets started to fly, prosecutors said. In another video angle, a shopkeeper is seen sitting down as a bullet blows through a window and past him. Others weren’t as lucky. In one sick June 29, 2020, scheme, Tysean Devonish, posed as a 15-year-old girl on Instagram to set up a meeting with Tracey Washington, who belonged to a rival group, prosecutors said. The pair exchanged messages about a credit card fraud scheme Washington devised, and decided to meet on Dean St. in Weeksville Gardens, according to messages obtained by authorities. Devonish took a car service to the location and three 900 Gang members — Kaireil Haynie, Alexander Williams and Tysean Devonshire — went to meet him. Haynie is accused of firing a shot into a livery car where Washington was seated.
Washington staggered out of the vehicle and collapsed and died as he tried to run away.