Feds: Team of hit men killed man
Three Native American men looking to settle a drug debt drove from Colorado to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and gunned down a 29year-old man after he finished a basketball game at a community center, federal court records say.
Myles Jacob Tuttle, Francisco “Gumby” Villanueva — also known as “Pancho” — and Adan “Ace Boogie” Corona were indicted in U.S. District Court in South Dakota on charges of premeditated first-degree murder, first-degree felony murder, conspiracy to commit assault and accessory to first-degree murder after the fact.
The trio is accused of nabbing Vincent Von Brewer III in Pine Ridge and killing him in October 2016, according to the grand jury indictment handed down Nov. 22.
The document was sealed until Wednesday, after authorities arrested Villanueva and Corona in Colorado. They were arraigned Thursday in Denver U.S. District Court.
Tiffanee “Love” Garnier, also of Colorado, was arrested in connection to Brewer’s murder on the charge of “having knowledge of … the fatal shooting of Vincent Brewer III,” Brewer’s murder has been linked to three other murders on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 2016.
According to court records, Tuttle, Villanueva and Corona loaded a car with guns in Colorado and drove to Pine Ridge on Oct. 16, 2016. There they picked up several people to help track down Brewer and drove around the reservation until they spotted him in front of the SuAnne Big Crow Center just after he had competed in a basketball tournament, court records indicate.
The suspects grabbed Brewer, beat him and shoved him into the back seat of their car. When Brewer managed to fight his way out of the vehicle and run, Tuttle, Villanueva and Corona shot him multiple times. A fourth person, who was not named in the indictment, also shot Brewer.
On Thursday, Wang ordered the transfer of Villanueva and Corona to jail in Rapid City, S.D.
Brewer’s killing is the latest in a rash of murders and crimes committed in the past two years in metro Denver and on Pine Ridge that had ties to both Colorado and South Dakota.
Denver resident Orlando Guadalupe Jose Ephron Villanueva de Macias, also known as “Chris,” was indicted in the Sept. 29, 2016 murder of Chunta Suta Wi Colhoff, 34, on Pine Ridge. Villanueva de Macias was arrested in Denver on Oct. 3, 2016, and was later extradited to South Dakota.
The Rapid City Journal has reported that FBI and Bureau of Indian Affairs officials were investigating whether Colhoff’s murder was linked to Brewer’s killing.
The newspaper also reported that two other people were murdered on the reservation in the summer of 2016. Todd Little Bull was fatally shot in August. In July, 13-year-old Te’ca Clifford was killed while walking home with her friends in Pine Ridge, the Journal reported. The paper quoted Oglala Sioux tribal president John Yellow Bird Steele as saying that all four cases were likely related to drugs.
Smash-and-grab robbers broke into the The Rooster outdoors store in Rapid City on April 10, 2016, and stole 25 guns.
Three weeks later on May 4, 2016, Jose Ocampo, 37, allegedly shot and killed Michael House, 29, in Lakewood. Ocampo was arrested at a motel at 5888 Broadway in Denver.
Two guns found inside the hotel room where Ocampo was arrested had been stolen three weeks earlier from The Rooster.
A third gun from that same robbery was recovered following a carjacking at 11:56 p.m. on May 10, 2016. The gun was recovered inside the stolen Jeep Cherokee following a chase early the next morning in which the suspect rammed an Aurora police vehicle during a chase.
Aurora police gunned down 35-year-old Stephen Ray Schuster after he raised the stolen gun in a threatening manner in the 7700 block of S. Quatar Court.