Seventeen alleged gang members have been charged in a massive 118-count indictment in Brooklyn, accused of causing numerous shootings, including four murders.
The New York Post reported that 14 of the defendants are teenagers, and that the group is “accused of hunting down rival gang members and committing a series of armed assaults, killing four people and wounding 10 in the process.”
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez announced the arrest during a news conference on Tuesday.
“One of the most disturbing aspects of this case is the age of the defendants in this indictment. Some of them were as young as 14 or 15 years old” when they committed the crimes, Gonzalez said. “That is heartbreaking, that some of our youngest residents in our county are involved in this gang and gun violence … it’s devastating and it’s truly destructive.”
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The alleged babyfaced killers are members of the YPF gang — an alliance of three street gangs in Brownsville, East New York and Fort Greene that banded together to increase their power as they waged a war against their enemies, prosecutors said.
Videos obtained throughout the investigation allegedly show the teens flaunting their guns in a series of social media posts, including one that depicts a defendant shoving a gun inside a puppy’s mouth as he holds the dog by its scruff.
“These videos really show, and they were all uncovered during the course of the investigation, how deeply ingrained the problem is, how this gang and gun culture has obsessed these young men. They wave these guns around. They show them off. They brag about them. These guns are in a way something that they think makes them men,” Gonzalez said on Tuesday. “It just shows how deep our challenge is to change the culture that we have in some parts of our community.”
Two of the individuals are accused of killing college freshman Sherard McKoy while he was waiting for food while standing next to the alleged killers’ rival. Another arrested individual, along with two others, are accused of traveling to a 16-year-old’s birthday party to attack rival gang members. The three ended up shooting five partygoers, one of whom died.
One of the other arrested teenagers allegedly shot a 19-year-old NYU student in the arm.
“These guns were in the hands of bad people that did bad things to good people. The number of innocent people, bystanders, is unbelievable, the devastation that was carried out in this city,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said at the press conference. “You decimate a community’s ability to believe in being safe when you have violence of this magnitude.”
The oldest of the defendants is 23. The group faces charges of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder, and more. While 14 have been arrested, three remain at large, with police actively searching for them.