Police arrest couple in 2020 bike-theft killing
Video shows victim, 29, giving over bicycle before being shot multiple times
Utah police arrested a couple accused of killing a man over a stolen bicycle in southeast Albuquerque in the summer of 2020.
Breon Kindred and Davon Pritchett, both 28, are charged with an open count of murder, armed robbery, tampering with evidence and conspiracy in the June 27 death of 29-year-old Lavon King.
Albuquerque Police Department spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said Pritchett and Kindred were arrested by authorities in Ogden, Utah. Weber County jail records indicate the pair was booked into the facility Wednesday.
Court records show the pair had been identified as prime suspects within a month of King’s death but the homicide detective retired and the case languished until it was reopened Dec. 1, 2021.
Gallegos said the case was picked up as a result of changes made by Chief Harold Medina to “deal with deficiencies from the past.”
“One of those changes involved a review of homicide cases that were handled by detectives as they prepared to leave the unit,” he said. “That review process, along with other changes, has resulted in new leads that are moving several cases forward.”
According to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court:
Officers responded to the shooting around 8:40 p.m. at Pennsylvania and Zuni SE. They found King with “numerous” gunshot wounds and he died at the scene.
Surveillance video showed a man and a woman riding mopeds pull behind King, who was on a bicycle. The man crashes the moped and gets up, pointing a submachine gun at King.
The video shows King give the bicycle to the man before being shot multiple times. The man takes the bicycle and rides off, leaving the crashed moped behind.
The video showed — less than two minutes later — the couple come back on a moped as people gather near King’s body. The man grabs the crashed moped and leaves the scene.
A detective recognized the man as Kindred, a rapper known as “Fourg Sonyboi” with an affinity for mopeds and bicycles. Police learned Kindred and Pritchett lived near the crime scene and found Facebook video in which Kindred talks about his bike getting stolen and made veiled threats to the person responsible.
Police searched the couple’s apartment July 10 and found the bike, spray painted and partly dismantled with a piece smoldering on a grill. They also found the moped that had crashed and two guns — but not the one used to kill King. Kindred and Pritchett refused to speak with police.
Days later, police found a YouTube video where Kindred raps about shooting a man with a MAC-10 while riding a scooter. On Facebook, police found a halfhour monologue where Kindred spoke of his “strong, emotional connection” to bicycles due to his father being “killed over a bike” before he was born.
Kindred says in the video, “all my life, (expletive) bikes just fall in my lap,” attributing it to an otherworldly connection with his father. In the video, Kindred pans to the bike allegedly taken from King, calling it his “daddy bike,” and saying “no amount of money” would lead him to sell it.
The detective turned over the case to a homicide detective on July 28.
On Dec. 1, 2021, the detective wrote he was approached by “command level staff” at the department and told the homicide detective had retired and “the case needed to be brought to completion.”
The detective reviewed photographs taken from Kindred’s Facebook showing a submachine gun identical to the one used to kill King. An arrest warrant was filed for the pair in late December.