Faces of NYC gang violence
33 hit by 151 raps in ‘killer’ roundup
Queens prosecutors Tuesday unsealed a massive 151-count indictment against 33 rival gangbangers whose running street feud terrorized innocent New Yorkers and left at least two people dead, including a promising 14-year-old hoopster gunned down in a tragic case of mistaken identity.
At least six people were wounded in the bloody yearslong beef between the Money World crew and two rival gangs, police and prosecutors said.
Athlete slain
Among the victims of the senseless violence was high school freshman Aamir Griffin, who was shot dead in 2019 on a South Jamaica basketball court.
“The streets of South Jamaica, Queens, are a much safer place as a result of the events leading up to this takedown,” NYPD Deputy Inspector Jerry O’Sullivan, commanding officer of the 113th Precinct, said at a joint press conference with prosecutors.
“Aamir wasn’t playing basketball by himself,” he said. “We’ve had two cops assigned to that basketball court, also. And for gang members to feel comfortable enough to bring a gun to the vicinity of a basketball court where cops are, and to shoot and hit an innocent person — that is completely unacceptable.”
The feud between Money World and gangs Local Trap Stars and Never Forget Loyalty stemmed from the April 16, 2019, attack on a Trap Stars member by two rival gangsters, who slashed and beat him.
On Oct. 26, 2019, Money World member Sean Brown allegedly spotted Griffin playing basketball outside NYCHA’s Baisley Park Houses and mistook him for a rival, killing the teen with three shots from a .380caliber handgun. Hundreds gathered for the promising young athlete’s funeral in Jamaica the following week, with the Benjamin N. Cardozo HS freshman’s body arriving at the Greater Allen AME Cathedral in a white horse-drawn carriage.
It would be nearly two years before his alleged killer was nabbed.
“He took a lot from me,” the slain teen’s mother, Shanequa Griffin, told The Post after Brown’s arrest in August 2021. “He broke my heart.
“I just want him to know that he is going to get what he deserves,” she said of the accused killer. “It’s still fresh for me. Every day is still like it just happened, like it was just yesterday.”
Six more attacks
What followed the teen’s death was six more retaliatory attacks between the gangs, including the New Year’s Eve 2020 shooting death of Sean Vance, 26, as he sat in the driver’s seat of a parked BMW on Sutphin Boulevard, prosecutors said.
The alleged shooter, Money World member Tymirth Bey-Foster, who planned the hit with three other members, wrongfully believed Vance was involved in an attack on a fellow gangbanger earlier in the day, prosecutors said.
Bey-Foster is among the gang members charged with seconddegree murder, with Jokai Coy, Justin Harvey and Joel Lewis charged as co-conspirators in the slaying.
Also charged with murder is Brown, who is accused of pulling the trigger in Griffin’s killing, authorities said.
All 33 defendants are charged with conspiracy to commit murder and other raps, prosecutors said. As of Tuesday, 15 had been arraigned, three were awaiting arraignment, eight were already in jail in other cases, three were awaiting extradition from North Carolina and New Jersey, and four were still at large, according to prosecutors.
“We have seen law-abiding New Yorkers peacefully going about their business being killed by mindless gang violence,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said.
“At the heart of the indictment is a blood feud between Southeast Queens street gangs to establish their territorial dominance,” she said.