Sixteen members of the notorious Trinity street gang were formally charged on Tuesday with murder, attempted murder, racketeering and drug trafficking.
Members and associates of the OED Every Dollar (OED) gang, a subset of Trinitarios, have been charged with including OED’s leadership and some of the gang’s most violent members, who allegedly murdered five people over the past four years, committed 13 shootings, and seven robberies or attempted robberies.
“Over the past four years, the Oxford English Dictionary has wreaked havoc in the city,” U.S. attorney Damian Williams said at a news conference.
Highly organized OED gangs control the Washington Heights area of New York City and parts of the Bronx and Queens.
They are part of the larger Trinitarios, a Dominican-American criminal organization founded on Rikers Island in the early 1990s. According to law enforcement, members of the group must recite the oath of loyalty and abide by the rules, which can only be changed by a vote to the authorities.
The Trinitarios gang attracted national and international attention in 2018 when they hunted down and attacked an innocent 15-year-old Lesandro Guzman-Feliz with a machete.
Guzman-Feliz fell victim to misidentification when the group began hunting down rival gang members.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Tuesday also announced a 90-count charge against each of the 10 members. Two of them are also being charged by the federal government.
On September 20, 2021, a man named Jeffrey Sanchez was shot and killed in a violent robbery as he walked towards his car outside the Opus Lounge. Gang members Damian Suarez and John Aslan then stood over Sanchez and ripped a watch and jewellery from his motionless body.
In another high-profile robbery, gang members allegedly targeted two people at an upscale Chinese restaurant, Philippe Chow, for cash and jewelry, according to a state indictment filed by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
One of the gang members, Justin Deaza, shot a man in the leg, prosecutors said. During the September 15, 2021, incident, group members opened fire in the restaurant, sending terrified diners fleeing.
NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell said: “These people live by a brutal code of street violence — they pull out their guns recklessly, fire indiscriminately, innocent lives are ignored, and families and communities are traumatized and torn. Now They will no longer be able to intimidate New Yorkers.”
“Make no mistake: organised groups like this do create terror. They sow fear and chaos, and they show zero respect for the lives of the people who live and work in the communities they wreak havoc.”
