Saturday, June 8, 2024 - The leader of a Brooklyn, New York street gang was convicted Thursday, June 6 in the murder of a government witness during a territory war in the East New York projects, authorities have revealed.
Maliek Miller, the 30-year-old leader of the Ninedee Gang
out of the Louis H. Pink Houses, ordered and helped plan the July 2020 killing
of Shatavia Walls, 33, after she took the stand against one of Miller’s junior
colleagues who shot her in 2017, according to a statement from federal
prosecutors.
The FBI hit Miller with more than a half-dozen charges
connected to her death, including racketeering, conspiracy to commit murder in
aid of racketeering, murder in aid of racketeering and weapons and drug
offences.
After a four-week trial in Brooklyn federal court, a jury
declared him guilty on each count, according to a statement from the US
Attorney’s Office.
He faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
“Today’s verdict is momentous
because it holds Miller accountable for orchestrating a cowardly plot to kill a
woman who bravely stood up to his Ninedee Gang, and it upholds the rule of law
for the residents of the Pink Houses who just want to go about their lives and
raise their children without the plague of violence and danger inflicted on
them by ruthless criminals like the defendant,” US Attorney Breon Peace said in
the statement.
“The verdict ensures that
Miller will spend the rest of his life in prison, which I hope provides some
measure of solace to the family of Shatavia Walls.”
Walls’ fatal shooting on the night of July 7, 2020, had been
well planned and carried out by the Ninedee Gang just three days after Walls
confronted the gangbangers about setting off illegal fireworks in the Linden
Boulevard housing complex.
During the fight, Miller called Walls a “snitch” and also
fired his gun into the air, prosecutors said.
Shortly after, Miller and other Ninedee members began
plotting her killing.
In 2019 Walls testified in a Brooklyn federal case that a
member of the Loopy Gang — another housing complex crew with deep ties to the
Ninedees, had shot her two years earlier.
She faced pressure during that time, as gangbangers posted
flyers throughout the complex that said “Shatavia Been a Rat And She Still
Ratting.”
Three days later after the Independence Day encounter,
Ninedee members Quintin Green, 23, and gang member Joe Santana, 20, set their
trap, court documents said.
The pair waited at the Pink Houses through the afternoon and
early evening of July 7, waiting for a chance to shoot the unsuspecting woman.
Walls finally walked out of a building in the complex at
about 9:25 p.m. and that’s when Green started shooting, the feds said.
Green missed his intended target as the bullet struck an innocent bystander, prosecutors said.
Green followed Walls as she ran and kept on firing the whole
time.
In a desperate attempt, the doomed woman unknowingly ran
right toward Santana who was a juvenile at the time. He also opened fire,
according to prosecutors.
Eventually, Green caught Walls and shot her behind one of
the Linden Boulevard buildings.
Afterwards, Ninedee member Shakur Bey, 27, burnt the
shooters’ clothing by tossing it down an incinerator, the US Attorney’s Office
said.
Then gang member Kevin Wint, 30, rented a hotel room near
John F. Kennedy Airport in Queens so the killers could hide out.
Walls stayed alive for 10 days before she finally died.
Green, Santana, and Bey have already pleaded guilty to
charges associated with the murder and are awaiting sentencing.
Wint, who pleaded guilty in March 2023 has already been
sentenced to more than nine years in prison for his role, the feds said.
“There is no place for such
egregious violence in our city, especially when used in retaliation to incite
fear,” FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge James Smith said in a statement.
“May today’s conviction offer
some closure to Shatavia Walls’s family and serve as a deterrent to gangs who
use violent tactics in furtherance of their criminal activity.”
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