Jose Lugo’s personal appearance presented a contrast with other former Latin Kings who have testified for the US government in orange jail jumpsuits and leg irons: Lugo took the oath in a suit and tie, wearing a styled Mohawk and earrings.
Lugo, whose street name was Hova, explained in his testimony on Thursday in the racketeering trial of six North Carolina Latin Kings in Winston-Salem how he wore a wire for the FBI as a Charlotte Latin King who intentionally gravitated to North Carolina Latin King statewide leader Jorge Cornell’s Greensboro group to gather intelligence for law enforcement. He talked about arranging to procure firearms for the Greensboro Latin Kings, buying a handgun from Cornell, plotting to attack ex-members and ordering a beating to discipline a member who had violated orders – all while feeding audio recordings to a law enforcement task force.
“I had to be a good liar,” Lugo testified. “I had to be manipulating. I was doing a little bit of everything.”
Lugo testified that he became an informant for the FBI and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department in 2008 right around the time Cornell was shot in Greensboro. Later, he was told to report to Guilford County Sheriff’s Office Deputy John Lowes, who was part of an FBI task force.
A native of Caracas, Venezuela, Lugo said his status as a permanent resident alien made him seriously consider the consequences of his involvement with the Latin Kings, influencing his decision to work with law enforcement. He said he was paid for his services, but did not specify an amount.
“There was a serious incident in South Carolina with MS-13 where they all got rounded up and deported,” Lugo testified. “I said, ‘That’s not going to happen to me.’ But it was going to happen sooner or later.”
Part of the role Lugo said he played as a Latin King was ordering a “physical,” or a beating on Bless, a Texas native named Jesus Alvarenga who also became a Latin King in Charlotte and migrated to Greensboro. Alvarenga testified that he received discipline because he had argued with Lugo outside a gas station causing the clerk to call the police while a group of Latin Kings were on their way to a Greensboro City Council meeting. The incident displeased Cornell because it drew negative attention at a time when he was running for city council.
The government played an audio recording made by Lugo of Alvarenga receiving a one-minute “physical” involving strikes to the chest below the neck from King Bam, or Wesley Williams. The sound of punching can be heard, followed by Alvarenga’s agonized cries. During the beating another Latin King from Charlotte, Jonathan Benitez, or King Bird, can be heard counseling Alvarenga: “Calm down and breathe. Inhale, my brother. Inhale and exhale.”
Alvarenga testified that Cornell left before the beating, but Hova called him afterwards to report how it went. Later that night, Cornell took everyone out for pizza.
Lugo said he had discouraged Alvarenga from joining the Latin Kings when they lived in Charlotte.
“He was very persistent about coming to me in the Latin Kings,” Lugo said. “I said, ‘No, I know what I’m into.’ I didn’t realize it at the time, but he had affiliated with a ghost tribe, and they were ordered to report to Jay. He was already in that bunch, so we had no choice but to take him in.”
Alvarenga’s testimony was different.
He said that he knew Hova before either of them became Latin Kings, and even went to church with Hova’s mother, who was a Jehovah’s Witness. He went to parties in the UNC-Charlotte area with Hova and another guy named Flaco. Alvarenga testified that Hova and Flaco joined a set of the Latin Kings, and Hova tried to recruit him. Alvarenga said he resisted Hova’s overture, but that the two remained friends. He said Hova came to see him at his father’s garage, and they smoked a couple blunts of marijuana together.
“They were like stick-up kids,” Alvarenga said of Hova and Flaco. “They would brag about robbing Mexicans and illegal people. I didn’t want to have anything to do with that. They would rob illegal immigrants, people who won’t report it to the police because nine to one they’ll get deported.”
Later, Alvarenga said he sold some marijuana to Bird, and the two became close friends. Bird encouraged him to join the Latin Kings, but Alvarenga told him he had no interest because of what he knew of Hova and Flaco’s activities. Alvarenga recounted that Bird told him that he reported to the Bloodline Latin Kings in New York, which emphasized peace and unity. He ended up joining Bird’s Latin King group in Charlotte. But that group was ordered to report to Cornell, who in turn reported to the Manifest Latin Kings in Chicago. Alvarenga said Bird “had to call New York to get authorization to sign under King Jay.”
The alleged lines of loyalty are somewhat confused by the fact that Cornell comes from Brooklyn, NY and has cited King Tone, the onetime leader of the New York Latin Kings, as a mentor, while Jason Yates, with whom Cornell came into conflict, comes from Chicago.
Alvarenga said he had a dispute with his father and decided to move to Greensboro. He lived with other Latin Kings first on Kirkman Street and then on West Terrell Street.
Alvarenga testified that he, Flaco, Hova and Bam sold bootleg DVDs to make money.
“We would get funding from Jay,” he said. “And we would give him a fee for his investment.”
He used the money he earned to buy clothes and marijuana. Alvarenga said he continued to sell marijuana in Greensboro. Cornell allowed him to sell marijuana, but forbade Latin Kings members from selling crack or powder cocaine.
Alvarenga said that not long after his physical he fled Greensboro. He said he approached a woman at McDonald’s and explained that he was trying to get away from a gang. The woman and her husband threw some laundry on top of him, drove him to the bus station and contacted his mother, who wired some money to cover his fare to Charlotte.
Alvarenga said he left his EBT food stamp card with all the rest of his belongings at the West Terrell Street house. His PIN number was written on a sticky note affixed to the back of the card. He said he later learned that his card had been used after he left.
Alvarenga called the Greensboro Police Department after fleeing to Charlotte. He testified that he told the police: “If I were going to get murdered… that it would be because of King Jay’s authorization.”
The FBI contacted him soon afterwards, and he said he ended up receiving about $700 from the agency in 2009 for his assistance.
In late 2008, Lugo said he agreed to procure guns for the Greensboro group. Transportation was a challenge, so the FBI provided Lugo with a rental vehicle. Outside of Greensboro near the Grandover Resort, Detective Lowes arranged to have the car stopped, and the guns were confiscated. Lugo said there was no punishment from the Greensboro Latin Kings for failing to make the delivery.
The government played several recordings made by Lugo for the jury on Thursday. The recordings are of poor quality, many of the statements are inaudible or incomprehensible and at times it is difficult to tell who is speaking. The government provided members of the jury with transcripts to help follow the audio, but Judge James A. Beaty Jr. cautioned them that where the audio and transcripts appeared to conflict they should rely on the audio.
In one of the recordings a voice that sounds like Cornell’s can be heard saying that Bless owed him $320 for unpaid rent when he left Greensboro. “We got his food stamp card,” the person says. “We took $200 off that.”
Other recordings appear to capture Cornell talking to other members about his desire to build the organization and how ranking members need to exercise more authority to impose his control over wayward Latin Kings.
Lugo named several ex-members who were considered rivals in late 2009, including Yates, Cesar Herrera, Allan Jordan and the Vasquez brothers. None of the audio purportedly related to the conflict could be understood when the recording was played in court.
“In December 2009, we gathered up,” Lugo testified. “We went to these people’s houses late at night while these families were sleeping to see – how can I put it – how we can take reaction to whatever order we’re given.”
In another recording, several people can be heard in a light-hearted, relaxed conversation punctuated with laughter. Cornell’s voice is recognizable in the recording, but it’s difficult to differentiate his from others.
Some of the statements follow:
“How can anybody want to follow a leader, stripped or not, who got punched in the mouth by a MS-13?”
“He’s a straight pussy.”
“In Smithfield, Durham and Asheboro they were running around saying they were kings when they were not real kings.”
“We’re dealing with a whole lot of fake kings that don’t want to come out and fight.”
Other recordings document Lugo approaching Cornell to buy a handgun. The informant testified that he paid Cornell $150 with funds provided by the FBI for the gun, and then turned it over to Detective Lowes.
Another set of recordings appears to document conversations involving a planned arson.
Some of the statements follow:
“If anything goes down we’re going to be looked at. So anything we do we got to do it real clean. Like you say, ‘In and out.’… Any one of these charges will automatically become a RICO charge.”
“Are you crazy? What the f***? You’re burning down your own house.”
“Do that. Yeah, let’s do that.”
Lugo testified, “We were talking about how to get back at Menace and Psych’s house, as well as Munchy’s. We were going to go ahead and fill these bottles with this fluid that was very flammable. Peaceful said, ‘Let’s do this in a way that it doesn’t come back on us.'”
Lugo admitted under direct examination by Assistant US Attorney Robert AJ Lang that he helped fill bottles with kerosene.
“Would you have thrown the bottles of kerosene at the house?”
Lang asked.
“Never,” Lugo responded.
The informant said that as soon as he could get away without drawing noticed, he contacted the FBI to expose the plan.
CORRECTION: This blog post initially misidentified a former leader of the New York Latin Kings. The information has been corrected.
Day 8: North Carolina Latin Kings on trial
The US government put its third cooperating defendant on the witness stand in the racketeering trial of about a dozen North Carolina Latin Kings in federal court in Winston-Salem on Wednesday.
Richard Robinson, a Latin King known as Focus who was active from 2009 up to the time of the indictment last December, drew a picture through his testimony of an organization consumed with schemes to punish ex-members and bring renegade members under control that occasionally clashed with other gangs. He described a Greensboro chapter that rarely exceeded more than five people in which chronic money woes sometimes forced members into illegal activities. Robinson told the jury he became disillusioned that the organization that initially impressed him under the leadership of Jorge Cornell as a righteous force for community improvement eventually revealed itself to be no different than any other street organization.
“I heard about Cornell running for city council and bringing about a peace agreement; I thought that was righteous,” the 23-year-old Robinson testified. “But then I saw the things we were doing, and I thought, ‘We’re no better than anybody else.’”
Like two other cooperating defendants, Luis Alberto Rosa and Marcelo Ysrael Perez, Robinson took the witness stand in an orange Guilford County Jail jumpsuit and leg irons.
Robinson said he grew up moving from state to state, spending parts of his childhood in North Carolina, Maryland, Kentucky and Texas, because his stepfather was in the military. He first encountered the Latin Kings in Baltimore, Md. but turned down a friend’s invitation to join because he “didn’t want to be any part of” their activities, namely “robbing women and beating up children.”
But as a JobCorps volunteer with an assignment in Henderson, NC, he began to investigate the North Carolina Latin Kings. He testified that he “saw the righteous movement that” Cornell was leading, and e-mailed the leader to see if he could join. For whatever reason, he did not hear back from Cornell, but began wearing black and yellow – similar to the Latin Kings’ traditional black and gold colors.
He happened to bump into Samuel Velasquez, also known as King Hype, on the Amtrak train in Raleigh while he was traveling between his mother’s home in Winston-Salem and his JobCorps assignment in Henderson. Velasquez is one of seven remaining defendants who have not struck plea deals with the government.
Robinson said Velasquez asked him if he was a Latin King, and Robinson responded that he was “rep-ing.”
“You don’t rep,” Robinson recalled Velasquez saying. “You either are one or you’re not.”
Robinson told Velasquez he had e-mailed Cornell, but had received no response. So Velasquez called Cornell, who confirmed Robinson’s story. Then Velasquez told Robinson he should come to Greensboro for NC A&T University homecoming.
He met Velasquez, Rosa and Wesley Williams at the McDonalds on Randleman Road.
“They asked me some questions,” Robinson said. “They asked me: ‘If there were two burning buildings and my mother was in one and a Latin King was in the other, which one would I go for first?’ I said, ‘My mother.’ I guess that was the right answer.”
Robinson said he got his street name at that first meeting at McDonalds through a conversation with Velasquez. “When I put my mind to something I stay with it,” Robinson testified. “I went to school for culinary arts and I wanted to have my own restaurant. He said I had a goal, and I needed to stay focused to achieve it.”
The next time he came to Greensboro was to attend a speech by Cornell at Bennett College. Again, he was summoned by Velasquez.
“He was talking about some anniversary of the KKK, police brutality and racism that’s going on today,” Robinson recalled in his testimony under cross-examination.
That weekend he stayed at Cornell’s house on West Terrell Street, and Cornell’s vehicle was repossessed. Robinson testified that Cornell ordered him to stand in front of the vehicle to prevent the tow truck from executing the repossession, but that he was unwilling to do so. He testified that Williams threw a rock at the tow truck but it sped off. The three went to the place where the vehicle was supposed to be secured to try to retrieve a backpack belonging to one of Cornell’s daughters, but were unable to locate it.
Robinson testified that after returning to Henderson he received a phone call telling him that if someone called and asked about Shima Auto Sales to say he didn’t know anything about it. Cornell told him the owner had been badly beaten, Robinson testified, and that Cornell said he had nothing to do with it but that the man probably “had screwed a lot of people over.”
One of his duties as an initiate was to drive around with Rosa and Williams looking for ex-Latin Kings, Robinson testified. They planned to go burn down the house of a former Latin King whose street name was Munchy located across the street from the DH Griffin headquarters on the day before New Year’s Eve of 2009.
Assistant US Attorney Robert AJ Lang asked Robinson for the reason behind the planned arson.
“Because they were ex-kings and from what I was told they were guilty of treason against the inca,” Robinson responded.
Among the reasons he went along with the plan, Robinson said, was that he suddenly needed personal support.
“I realized I was about to be homeless,” he testified. “I got out of JobCorps. And Jorge Cornell offered me a place to stay. He said he didn’t believe in kings being homeless.”
Eventually the arson was called off, Robinson said, because Velasquez was caught trying to transport machetes on the Amtrak train, and Cornell thought there would be too much law enforcement attention on the Latin Kings. Robinson testified under cross-examination that Cornell needed the machetes for self-protection because as an ex-felon he was not legally allowed to possess a firearm.
Cornell’s generosity and trust also extended to Robinson’s friend, Charles Moore. The two had been roommates in AmeriCorps, Robinson said, but Moore left AmeriCorps because he had a drinking problem. He moved in with his mother in Virginia, but she put him out of her house. Robinson said he vouched for Robinson, and Cornell invited him to move into the West Terrell Street house, too.
A party hosted by Eric Ginsburg, who is now a reporter with YES! Weekly, came up during Robinson’s testimony. Robinson said that he, Moore, Williams and Russell Kilfoil, one of the defendants who is known as Peaceful, were invited to Ginsburg’s house. Robinson said he stepped outside and observed two individuals who were drunk who were beating on the hood of the car owned by Kilfoil’s girlfriend, who was known as Midget. Robinson said Kilfoil asked one of the individuals to apologize and he refused. Williams hit the individual at his own volition, Robinson said, and then Moore hit him again after Kilfoil allegedly said, “Hit him because he’s crying.”
Ginsburg was hired as a reporter by YES! Weekly in the fall of 2011, after completing an eight-month internship that began in January. He served as campaign manager for Cornell’s 2009 bid for Greensboro City Council prior to joining YES! Weekly.
Moore and Williams, like Robinson, have struck plea deals with the government and are expected to testify in coming weeks.
In December 2009, Robinson said Cornell sent him and Velasquez over to Kilfoil’s house to confront him about rumors that he had been involved in cocaine in some way. Robinson testified under cross-examination that Cornell did not allow members to use or sell drugs. Robinson agreed with public defender Brian Aus that Kilfoil had been on leave from the Latin Kings at the time because he had a newborn baby and was working for 2 Men and a Truck. Cornell and Kilfoil are biological brothers. Robinson testified that Kilfoil attended a Latin Kings Christmas dinner and the previous tension between the two was resolved.
Kilfoil was soon serving as first crown for the Greensboro chapter. On Feb. 2, 2010, Robinson testified, he and some other Latin Kings were at the Beloved Community Center in a playroom used for toddlers upstairs. Robinson said Kilfoil asked him to recite his lessons – information Latin Kings must memorize pertaining to structure, symbols and creeds. Robinson demonstrated his proficiency, and Kilfoil officiated a ceremony to make him a member on the spot.
Much of the Latin Kings time was consumed during the period of his membership with dealing with real or perceived adversaries, Robinson testified. One incident involved a black Mercedes driven by Michelle, Cornell’s girlfriend at the time, getting shot up while parked in the garage at her condominium. At first, Robinson testified, Cornell speculated that the culprit was Jason Paul Yates, a Latin King with whom Cornell had experienced a falling out.
Yates is also a defendant in the government racketeering indictment, but he will be tried separately because his public defender told the court she was unprepared to go to court with the other six defendants.
Another theory soon surfaced.
“A lady in the condo said she saw two black males running away,” Robinson testified. “Cornell thought the FBI may have set it up to get us to retaliate against other people.”
But Robinson’s testimony also indicated that Cornell didn’t need outside provocation to come into conflict with others. He said Cornell would scour the social network MySpace looking for people claiming to be Latin Kings across the state “and tell them to fall in place,” in other words to recognize his authority and report to him.
Robinson said Cornell rented a minivan. Cornell, Robinson, Rosa, Williams, Moore and a king named Chico drove down to Lumberton to meet King Tago. Robinson said King Tago told them he had been crowned in prison by King Bear. That is the street name for Robert Vasquez Jr., a Latin King who had become estranged from Cornell by that time. Robert Vasquez’s brothers, Anthony and Daniel, were also Latin Kings who were no longer welcome in Cornell’s group. Cornell told Tago that he needed to report to him, Robinson testified.
“There was no threat made,” Robinson said. “The only threat, if you want to call it that, was they better fall in line.” What would happen if Tago and the Lumberton chapter didn’t fall in line? Lang asked.
“We would smash ’em out,” Robinson testified, meaning beat them up.
On the drive back to Greensboro, Robinson recalled that Williams remarked that he wished they had guns “to go shoot up Anthony Vasquez’s house.” Robinson volunteered that his mother’s girlfriend had an AK-47 assault rifle and a shotgun. He said Cornell said he “would recommend it,” but that he wouldn’t tell Williams and Robinson to carry out the attack “because I don’t want to get caught up in it.”
Robinson testified that Cornell instructed them to get in touch with Kilfoil and bring him along, but Kilfoil backed out. Robinson and Williams traveled alone to his mother’s house in Winston-Salem and broke in with a credit card to steal the AK-47 and shotgun.
Robinson testified that they had discussed walking up with the guns and firing on the house. But Robinson thought a better plan would be for Williams to drive while Robinson fired from the passenger seat. Robinson said Williams told him he had a vendetta against Vasquez because he had invaded his house and stolen weapons. The first time they went out to launch the attack there were too many police in the area, Robinson testified. The second time, he said, “Williams felt it wasn’t a good idea, and I didn’t want to do it if he was going to change his mind.”
Robinson recalled, “I called Russell Kilfoil. He said, ‘All right, don’t worry about it,’ and canceled it.”
Christopher B. Shella, the public defender for Randolph Kilfoil – Jorge Cornell and Russell Kilfoil’s brother – heaped scorn on Robinson’s testimony.
“Had you ever handled those weapons before?” Shella asked.
“No,” Robinson responded.
“Had you ever fired an AK-47?”
“No.”
After aborting the mission, Robinson said they decided to take the weapons back to Winston-Salem. That resulted in a well-publicized early-morning traffic stop in April 2010. The Greensboro police officer who made the stop based on a purported traffic violation initially did not see the weapons in the second row of the minivan. But when he called for backup, the weapons were discovered. Robinson and Williams were charged with carrying concealed weapons.
Michael Patrick, Jorge Cornell’s public defender, tried unsuccessfully to have the firearms suppressed as evidence on grounds that the traffic stop violated Cornell’s constitutional right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure considering that he had rented the van. Judge James A. Beaty issued an order denying the defense motion.
Robinson testified under cross-examination that he lied when he told the Greensboro police that the weapons belonged to him.
Robinson testified that Cornell instigated many of the plans for violent strikes against former members.
“Cornell said we need to start handling these ex-kings,” Robinson testified. “He said, ‘There’s no need to sit around. We need to be proactive.’”
Robinson testified that a king named Ghost talked about tying an ex-king named Allan Jordan up and cutting out his tongue. Cornell and other kings allegedly discussed firebombing Anthony Vasquez’s house. Robinson testified that when the group learned that King Hova, or Jose Lugo, had been working as an FBI informant, he went to Hova’s girlfriend’s house. When he couldn’t locate Hova, Robinson said he smashed the window out of Hova’s girlfriend’s car.
Robinson also testified that he and Moore wrote bad checks to each other for about three weeks, garnering more than $2,500 by defrauding banks. He said that for every check they cashed they gave Cornell a cut of $50 to $100.
And Robinson said that the kings in Greensboro discussed burning down a house owned by Williams’ grandmother to collect the insurance money, specifically mentioning Cornell.
“Cornell threatened to kick Williams out of the house if he didn’t pay his rent,” Robinson testified. “He filled Bud Light bottles with kerosene and went over there. I listened on the police scanner on my cell phone, and heard about the fire. Williams came back to us smelling like kerosene. I told him he should have burned his clothes because it smelled terrible.”
Robinson said Williams ended up fleeing to New Jersey, where his mother lived, and Cornell never received any of the insurance proceeds.
“Cornell said he wanted $10,000 of it or he was going to send some kings up to her house in New Jersey,” Robinson said.
Robinson said the Latin Kings had some problems with Bloods in Smith Homes and Hairston Apartments, two nearby public housing projects. Moore was jumped by some Bloods because they thought he stole from them. Robinson said a universal – a gathering of Latin Kings from across the state – was called to deal with the conflict, and Cornell tried to reach the Bloods leader to resolve the matter.
But no accord was reached through the Bloods leadership, so Robinson said a coalition of Latin Kings and Crips organized a drive-by. Robinson testified that Velasquez drove the car, while King Chico and a Crip named Cole shot from within the car at a Bloods house.
Robinson said at one point he moved to Charlotte and ended up “in bad standing” with the Latin Kings, receiving Facebook messages from kings who told him he was “stripped” and that he was a “coward.” He returned to Greensboro in October to face his charges related to guns found in the minivan. A number of kings, including Moore, Russell Kilfoil and Carlos Coleman, a defendant also known as Spanky, showed up at Guilford County Courthouse in Greensboro ostensibly to support him, but Robinson testified they were actually there to intimidate him.
They were coming up the stairs to the plaza level, Robinson testified, when he saw Anthony Vasquez. Robinson said he saw Kilfoil take a swing at Vasquez as he exited the courthouse. Robinson had been talking with his lawyer, Chris Brook, but when he saw the altercation ensue, he ran out of the courthouse with Coleman and Moore. A surveillance video shown to the jury shows Kilfoil swinging at Vasquez, following by Robinson, Coleman and Moore joining in a chase around the front of the courthouse.
“We took him to the ground and beat him up,” Robinson testified.
Why, if he had just received probation, did Robinson commit an assault in front of the courthouse where it was certain to be captured by surveillance cameras, public defender Brian Aus asked.
“It’s basically like a habit,” Robinson responded.
“He’s the first crown,” he added, referring to Kilfoil. “By being the first crown I had to respond.”
Robinson said the Latin Kings retreated to the Beloved Community Center “to hide out,” but Vasquez found them there and tried to fight them.
“Cornell was happy that it happened,” Robinson testified. “He said, ‘It’s like Christmas finally came.’”
Robinson’s testimony revealed yet another dimension of internal conflict in the North Carolina Latin Kings.
He said he learned that Coleman had been hanging out with Bloods in Raleigh and had robbed a Burger King. Either the robbery, the association with the Bloods or both disappointed Cornell.
Robinson testified that a meeting of all the first crowns, or chapter leaders, was called in Greensboro to decide Coleman’s fate. As first crown of Charlotte at the time, Robinson was obligated to attend. Robinson said a third crown, or enforcer, held Coleman in a separate room while the first crowns took a vote. He and Russell Kilfoil vouched for Coleman and said he deserved another chance, Robinson testified. That essentially tied the vote.
“Coleman was brought into the room,” Robinson testified. “There are two guys with machetes raised. He sees what is happening and tears start coming down his cheeks. He says, ‘Oh my.’ Jorge said, ‘You should have thought about that before. But these two brothers said we should give you another chance. So you’re going to report directly to them twice a week.’
“Then he disappeared, and we never saw him again.”
Robinson said he started cooperating with the government in February, about three months after the indictment was handed down. During the discovery process his cooperation was discovered by the other defendants. He said a prisoner named David Fountain called him a “snitch” and told him he would have beaten him up if he wasn’t handcuffed.
“I have worries and concerns,” Robinson said. “I think about it every night. Am I going to make it home? Am I going to make it to the yard.”
Earlier in the day, the government presented testimony from Robert Vasquez Jr.’s girlfriend about a series of shooting at her house.
Ashley Lazo wiped away tears as she described how she took action to protect her two small children from a hail of bullets coming into her house on Keeler Street in Greensboro one night in June 2009.
“I could see the shards of wall dusting over my children,” she testified. “I prayed that they would not get up. Once I saw them, it seemed like the bullets were moving into the furthest corner of the room. I jumped up and tried to cover my children. I crawled with them into the hallway. I called for everyone that was in the house to make sure they were alright. It was then that I felt a burning sting in my upper thigh.”
She realized that she had been shot.
Robert Vasquez Jr. has testified that he is 90 percent certain that the shooter was Russell Kilfoil based on the make and model of the car and the hat the shooter was wearing.
Lazo testified about another shooting later that year when a real gunshot interrupted the action movie she was watching with Robert and Anthony. A bullet pierced the headboard of a bed, but no one was injured. The next day the residents found the letters “MS” scrawled on an outside wall in blue spray paint.
The government also put Greensboro police Officer Eric Rasecke on the stand, who testified that he responded to a “shots fired” call on Keeler Street in on a rainy night in April 2009 at about 3 a.m. At the end of the street he found two cars on either side of the street. Three individuals standing outside the vehicles told Rasecke they were stuck, and excitedly reported that they had been shot at.
Rasecke said he found 12-gauge shotgun shells at the scene. By the time he found the two stranded vehicles and their occupants, he said it had stopped raining, and he observed a dry spot in front of a house he knew to be a Latin King house, suggesting that a vehicle had recently left. He said he did not question anybody at the house.
Rasecke testified under cross-examination that he only “vaguely” knew who lived at the Keeler Street house. He said, “We knew that Jorge Cornell would frequent that house.”
Richard Robinson, a Latin King known as Focus who was active from 2009 up to the time of the indictment last December, drew a picture through his testimony of an organization consumed with schemes to punish ex-members and bring renegade members under control that occasionally clashed with other gangs. He described a Greensboro chapter that rarely exceeded more than five people in which chronic money woes sometimes forced members into illegal activities. Robinson told the jury he became disillusioned that the organization that initially impressed him under the leadership of Jorge Cornell as a righteous force for community improvement eventually revealed itself to be no different than any other street organization.
“I heard about Cornell running for city council and bringing about a peace agreement; I thought that was righteous,” the 23-year-old Robinson testified. “But then I saw the things we were doing, and I thought, ‘We’re no better than anybody else.’”
Like two other cooperating defendants, Luis Alberto Rosa and Marcelo Ysrael Perez, Robinson took the witness stand in an orange Guilford County Jail jumpsuit and leg irons.
Robinson said he grew up moving from state to state, spending parts of his childhood in North Carolina, Maryland, Kentucky and Texas, because his stepfather was in the military. He first encountered the Latin Kings in Baltimore, Md. but turned down a friend’s invitation to join because he “didn’t want to be any part of” their activities, namely “robbing women and beating up children.”
But as a JobCorps volunteer with an assignment in Henderson, NC, he began to investigate the North Carolina Latin Kings. He testified that he “saw the righteous movement that” Cornell was leading, and e-mailed the leader to see if he could join. For whatever reason, he did not hear back from Cornell, but began wearing black and yellow – similar to the Latin Kings’ traditional black and gold colors.
He happened to bump into Samuel Velasquez, also known as King Hype, on the Amtrak train in Raleigh while he was traveling between his mother’s home in Winston-Salem and his JobCorps assignment in Henderson. Velasquez is one of seven remaining defendants who have not struck plea deals with the government.
Robinson said Velasquez asked him if he was a Latin King, and Robinson responded that he was “rep-ing.”
“You don’t rep,” Robinson recalled Velasquez saying. “You either are one or you’re not.”
Robinson told Velasquez he had e-mailed Cornell, but had received no response. So Velasquez called Cornell, who confirmed Robinson’s story. Then Velasquez told Robinson he should come to Greensboro for NC A&T University homecoming.
He met Velasquez, Rosa and Wesley Williams at the McDonalds on Randleman Road.
“They asked me some questions,” Robinson said. “They asked me: ‘If there were two burning buildings and my mother was in one and a Latin King was in the other, which one would I go for first?’ I said, ‘My mother.’ I guess that was the right answer.”
Robinson said he got his street name at that first meeting at McDonalds through a conversation with Velasquez. “When I put my mind to something I stay with it,” Robinson testified. “I went to school for culinary arts and I wanted to have my own restaurant. He said I had a goal, and I needed to stay focused to achieve it.”
The next time he came to Greensboro was to attend a speech by Cornell at Bennett College. Again, he was summoned by Velasquez.
“He was talking about some anniversary of the KKK, police brutality and racism that’s going on today,” Robinson recalled in his testimony under cross-examination.
That weekend he stayed at Cornell’s house on West Terrell Street, and Cornell’s vehicle was repossessed. Robinson testified that Cornell ordered him to stand in front of the vehicle to prevent the tow truck from executing the repossession, but that he was unwilling to do so. He testified that Williams threw a rock at the tow truck but it sped off. The three went to the place where the vehicle was supposed to be secured to try to retrieve a backpack belonging to one of Cornell’s daughters, but were unable to locate it.
Robinson testified that after returning to Henderson he received a phone call telling him that if someone called and asked about Shima Auto Sales to say he didn’t know anything about it. Cornell told him the owner had been badly beaten, Robinson testified, and that Cornell said he had nothing to do with it but that the man probably “had screwed a lot of people over.”
One of his duties as an initiate was to drive around with Rosa and Williams looking for ex-Latin Kings, Robinson testified. They planned to go burn down the house of a former Latin King whose street name was Munchy located across the street from the DH Griffin headquarters on the day before New Year’s Eve of 2009.
Assistant US Attorney Robert AJ Lang asked Robinson for the reason behind the planned arson.
“Because they were ex-kings and from what I was told they were guilty of treason against the inca,” Robinson responded.
Among the reasons he went along with the plan, Robinson said, was that he suddenly needed personal support.
“I realized I was about to be homeless,” he testified. “I got out of JobCorps. And Jorge Cornell offered me a place to stay. He said he didn’t believe in kings being homeless.”
Eventually the arson was called off, Robinson said, because Velasquez was caught trying to transport machetes on the Amtrak train, and Cornell thought there would be too much law enforcement attention on the Latin Kings. Robinson testified under cross-examination that Cornell needed the machetes for self-protection because as an ex-felon he was not legally allowed to possess a firearm.
Cornell’s generosity and trust also extended to Robinson’s friend, Charles Moore. The two had been roommates in AmeriCorps, Robinson said, but Moore left AmeriCorps because he had a drinking problem. He moved in with his mother in Virginia, but she put him out of her house. Robinson said he vouched for Robinson, and Cornell invited him to move into the West Terrell Street house, too.
A party hosted by Eric Ginsburg, who is now a reporter with YES! Weekly, came up during Robinson’s testimony. Robinson said that he, Moore, Williams and Russell Kilfoil, one of the defendants who is known as Peaceful, were invited to Ginsburg’s house. Robinson said he stepped outside and observed two individuals who were drunk who were beating on the hood of the car owned by Kilfoil’s girlfriend, who was known as Midget. Robinson said Kilfoil asked one of the individuals to apologize and he refused. Williams hit the individual at his own volition, Robinson said, and then Moore hit him again after Kilfoil allegedly said, “Hit him because he’s crying.”
Ginsburg was hired as a reporter by YES! Weekly in the fall of 2011, after completing an eight-month internship that began in January. He served as campaign manager for Cornell’s 2009 bid for Greensboro City Council prior to joining YES! Weekly.
Moore and Williams, like Robinson, have struck plea deals with the government and are expected to testify in coming weeks.
In December 2009, Robinson said Cornell sent him and Velasquez over to Kilfoil’s house to confront him about rumors that he had been involved in cocaine in some way. Robinson testified under cross-examination that Cornell did not allow members to use or sell drugs. Robinson agreed with public defender Brian Aus that Kilfoil had been on leave from the Latin Kings at the time because he had a newborn baby and was working for 2 Men and a Truck. Cornell and Kilfoil are biological brothers. Robinson testified that Kilfoil attended a Latin Kings Christmas dinner and the previous tension between the two was resolved.
Kilfoil was soon serving as first crown for the Greensboro chapter. On Feb. 2, 2010, Robinson testified, he and some other Latin Kings were at the Beloved Community Center in a playroom used for toddlers upstairs. Robinson said Kilfoil asked him to recite his lessons – information Latin Kings must memorize pertaining to structure, symbols and creeds. Robinson demonstrated his proficiency, and Kilfoil officiated a ceremony to make him a member on the spot.
Much of the Latin Kings time was consumed during the period of his membership with dealing with real or perceived adversaries, Robinson testified. One incident involved a black Mercedes driven by Michelle, Cornell’s girlfriend at the time, getting shot up while parked in the garage at her condominium. At first, Robinson testified, Cornell speculated that the culprit was Jason Paul Yates, a Latin King with whom Cornell had experienced a falling out.
Yates is also a defendant in the government racketeering indictment, but he will be tried separately because his public defender told the court she was unprepared to go to court with the other six defendants.
Another theory soon surfaced.
“A lady in the condo said she saw two black males running away,” Robinson testified. “Cornell thought the FBI may have set it up to get us to retaliate against other people.”
But Robinson’s testimony also indicated that Cornell didn’t need outside provocation to come into conflict with others. He said Cornell would scour the social network MySpace looking for people claiming to be Latin Kings across the state “and tell them to fall in place,” in other words to recognize his authority and report to him.
Robinson said Cornell rented a minivan. Cornell, Robinson, Rosa, Williams, Moore and a king named Chico drove down to Lumberton to meet King Tago. Robinson said King Tago told them he had been crowned in prison by King Bear. That is the street name for Robert Vasquez Jr., a Latin King who had become estranged from Cornell by that time. Robert Vasquez’s brothers, Anthony and Daniel, were also Latin Kings who were no longer welcome in Cornell’s group. Cornell told Tago that he needed to report to him, Robinson testified.
“There was no threat made,” Robinson said. “The only threat, if you want to call it that, was they better fall in line.” What would happen if Tago and the Lumberton chapter didn’t fall in line? Lang asked.
“We would smash ’em out,” Robinson testified, meaning beat them up.
On the drive back to Greensboro, Robinson recalled that Williams remarked that he wished they had guns “to go shoot up Anthony Vasquez’s house.” Robinson volunteered that his mother’s girlfriend had an AK-47 assault rifle and a shotgun. He said Cornell said he “would recommend it,” but that he wouldn’t tell Williams and Robinson to carry out the attack “because I don’t want to get caught up in it.”
Robinson testified that Cornell instructed them to get in touch with Kilfoil and bring him along, but Kilfoil backed out. Robinson and Williams traveled alone to his mother’s house in Winston-Salem and broke in with a credit card to steal the AK-47 and shotgun.
Robinson testified that they had discussed walking up with the guns and firing on the house. But Robinson thought a better plan would be for Williams to drive while Robinson fired from the passenger seat. Robinson said Williams told him he had a vendetta against Vasquez because he had invaded his house and stolen weapons. The first time they went out to launch the attack there were too many police in the area, Robinson testified. The second time, he said, “Williams felt it wasn’t a good idea, and I didn’t want to do it if he was going to change his mind.”
Robinson recalled, “I called Russell Kilfoil. He said, ‘All right, don’t worry about it,’ and canceled it.”
Christopher B. Shella, the public defender for Randolph Kilfoil – Jorge Cornell and Russell Kilfoil’s brother – heaped scorn on Robinson’s testimony.
“Had you ever handled those weapons before?” Shella asked.
“No,” Robinson responded.
“Had you ever fired an AK-47?”
“No.”
After aborting the mission, Robinson said they decided to take the weapons back to Winston-Salem. That resulted in a well-publicized early-morning traffic stop in April 2010. The Greensboro police officer who made the stop based on a purported traffic violation initially did not see the weapons in the second row of the minivan. But when he called for backup, the weapons were discovered. Robinson and Williams were charged with carrying concealed weapons.
Michael Patrick, Jorge Cornell’s public defender, tried unsuccessfully to have the firearms suppressed as evidence on grounds that the traffic stop violated Cornell’s constitutional right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure considering that he had rented the van. Judge James A. Beaty issued an order denying the defense motion.
Robinson testified under cross-examination that he lied when he told the Greensboro police that the weapons belonged to him.
Robinson testified that Cornell instigated many of the plans for violent strikes against former members.
“Cornell said we need to start handling these ex-kings,” Robinson testified. “He said, ‘There’s no need to sit around. We need to be proactive.’”
Robinson testified that a king named Ghost talked about tying an ex-king named Allan Jordan up and cutting out his tongue. Cornell and other kings allegedly discussed firebombing Anthony Vasquez’s house. Robinson testified that when the group learned that King Hova, or Jose Lugo, had been working as an FBI informant, he went to Hova’s girlfriend’s house. When he couldn’t locate Hova, Robinson said he smashed the window out of Hova’s girlfriend’s car.
Robinson also testified that he and Moore wrote bad checks to each other for about three weeks, garnering more than $2,500 by defrauding banks. He said that for every check they cashed they gave Cornell a cut of $50 to $100.
And Robinson said that the kings in Greensboro discussed burning down a house owned by Williams’ grandmother to collect the insurance money, specifically mentioning Cornell.
“Cornell threatened to kick Williams out of the house if he didn’t pay his rent,” Robinson testified. “He filled Bud Light bottles with kerosene and went over there. I listened on the police scanner on my cell phone, and heard about the fire. Williams came back to us smelling like kerosene. I told him he should have burned his clothes because it smelled terrible.”
Robinson said Williams ended up fleeing to New Jersey, where his mother lived, and Cornell never received any of the insurance proceeds.
“Cornell said he wanted $10,000 of it or he was going to send some kings up to her house in New Jersey,” Robinson said.
Robinson said the Latin Kings had some problems with Bloods in Smith Homes and Hairston Apartments, two nearby public housing projects. Moore was jumped by some Bloods because they thought he stole from them. Robinson said a universal – a gathering of Latin Kings from across the state – was called to deal with the conflict, and Cornell tried to reach the Bloods leader to resolve the matter.
But no accord was reached through the Bloods leadership, so Robinson said a coalition of Latin Kings and Crips organized a drive-by. Robinson testified that Velasquez drove the car, while King Chico and a Crip named Cole shot from within the car at a Bloods house.
Robinson said at one point he moved to Charlotte and ended up “in bad standing” with the Latin Kings, receiving Facebook messages from kings who told him he was “stripped” and that he was a “coward.” He returned to Greensboro in October to face his charges related to guns found in the minivan. A number of kings, including Moore, Russell Kilfoil and Carlos Coleman, a defendant also known as Spanky, showed up at Guilford County Courthouse in Greensboro ostensibly to support him, but Robinson testified they were actually there to intimidate him.
They were coming up the stairs to the plaza level, Robinson testified, when he saw Anthony Vasquez. Robinson said he saw Kilfoil take a swing at Vasquez as he exited the courthouse. Robinson had been talking with his lawyer, Chris Brook, but when he saw the altercation ensue, he ran out of the courthouse with Coleman and Moore. A surveillance video shown to the jury shows Kilfoil swinging at Vasquez, following by Robinson, Coleman and Moore joining in a chase around the front of the courthouse.
“We took him to the ground and beat him up,” Robinson testified.
Why, if he had just received probation, did Robinson commit an assault in front of the courthouse where it was certain to be captured by surveillance cameras, public defender Brian Aus asked.
“It’s basically like a habit,” Robinson responded.
“He’s the first crown,” he added, referring to Kilfoil. “By being the first crown I had to respond.”
Robinson said the Latin Kings retreated to the Beloved Community Center “to hide out,” but Vasquez found them there and tried to fight them.
“Cornell was happy that it happened,” Robinson testified. “He said, ‘It’s like Christmas finally came.’”
Robinson’s testimony revealed yet another dimension of internal conflict in the North Carolina Latin Kings.
He said he learned that Coleman had been hanging out with Bloods in Raleigh and had robbed a Burger King. Either the robbery, the association with the Bloods or both disappointed Cornell.
Robinson testified that a meeting of all the first crowns, or chapter leaders, was called in Greensboro to decide Coleman’s fate. As first crown of Charlotte at the time, Robinson was obligated to attend. Robinson said a third crown, or enforcer, held Coleman in a separate room while the first crowns took a vote. He and Russell Kilfoil vouched for Coleman and said he deserved another chance, Robinson testified. That essentially tied the vote.
“Coleman was brought into the room,” Robinson testified. “There are two guys with machetes raised. He sees what is happening and tears start coming down his cheeks. He says, ‘Oh my.’ Jorge said, ‘You should have thought about that before. But these two brothers said we should give you another chance. So you’re going to report directly to them twice a week.’
“Then he disappeared, and we never saw him again.”
Robinson said he started cooperating with the government in February, about three months after the indictment was handed down. During the discovery process his cooperation was discovered by the other defendants. He said a prisoner named David Fountain called him a “snitch” and told him he would have beaten him up if he wasn’t handcuffed.
“I have worries and concerns,” Robinson said. “I think about it every night. Am I going to make it home? Am I going to make it to the yard.”
Earlier in the day, the government presented testimony from Robert Vasquez Jr.’s girlfriend about a series of shooting at her house.
Ashley Lazo wiped away tears as she described how she took action to protect her two small children from a hail of bullets coming into her house on Keeler Street in Greensboro one night in June 2009.
“I could see the shards of wall dusting over my children,” she testified. “I prayed that they would not get up. Once I saw them, it seemed like the bullets were moving into the furthest corner of the room. I jumped up and tried to cover my children. I crawled with them into the hallway. I called for everyone that was in the house to make sure they were alright. It was then that I felt a burning sting in my upper thigh.”
She realized that she had been shot.
Robert Vasquez Jr. has testified that he is 90 percent certain that the shooter was Russell Kilfoil based on the make and model of the car and the hat the shooter was wearing.
Lazo testified about another shooting later that year when a real gunshot interrupted the action movie she was watching with Robert and Anthony. A bullet pierced the headboard of a bed, but no one was injured. The next day the residents found the letters “MS” scrawled on an outside wall in blue spray paint.
The government also put Greensboro police Officer Eric Rasecke on the stand, who testified that he responded to a “shots fired” call on Keeler Street in on a rainy night in April 2009 at about 3 a.m. At the end of the street he found two cars on either side of the street. Three individuals standing outside the vehicles told Rasecke they were stuck, and excitedly reported that they had been shot at.
Rasecke said he found 12-gauge shotgun shells at the scene. By the time he found the two stranded vehicles and their occupants, he said it had stopped raining, and he observed a dry spot in front of a house he knew to be a Latin King house, suggesting that a vehicle had recently left. He said he did not question anybody at the house.
Rasecke testified under cross-examination that he only “vaguely” knew who lived at the Keeler Street house. He said, “We knew that Jorge Cornell would frequent that house.”
This week in YES! Weekly
dirt: City gathers feedback on Human Relations Department
10 best: TEN BEST LAST MINUTE COSTUMES
voices: Mom and me
editorial: Voter fraud, right here in Guilford County
tunes: Jonas Sees In Color’s journey to independence
flicks: The rite to remain Silent: belated horror sequel is silly schlock
visions: High Point photo exhibit documents Occupy Wall Street protest
chow: At long last, the Triad gets a Trader Joe’s
crash: Little monsters
Day 7: North Carolina Latin Kings on trial
The better part of the testimony and evidence put on the by government on Tuesday dealt with alleged efforts by Latin Kings in Greensboro to procure weapons after Jorge Cornell, the Greensboro-based leader of the state organization, was shot by an unknown assailant in an apartment complex in August 2008.
Randy Bello, a Charlotte Latin King with the street name of Drama, testified that King Peaceful, who is Russell Kilfoil and Cornell’s biological brother, called him and told him “to bring whatever guns I could” after the shooting.
Cornell and Kilfoil are both defendants in the criminal racketeering trial, along with four others. Six defendants have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the government. Another defendant, Jason Paul Yates, was severed from the case after his lawyer told the court she was unprepared to go to trial, and his case will be tried separately.
Bello said Peaceful arranged for him to pick up a .45-caliber handgun from a Bloods member in Charlotte. Bello also testified that he had a .32-caliber handgun that he offered to the Greensboro Latin Kings. But he appeared to hold reservations about sharing it with the Greensboro Latin Kings, telling another Charlotte Latin King, Hova, at the time: “This shit already got a head on it.”
As he explained to the jury on Tuesday, “That means it’s dirty. It’s a stolen gun.”
What Bello didn’t know at the time is that Hova, who is Jose Lugo, was recording their conversation as a confidential informant wearing a wire for the government.
The government contends in its indictment that in early August 2008 Cornell and Kilfoil ordered Latin Kings members to bring firearms from Charlotte to Greensboro to be used in a retaliatory strike against MS-13 members who had shot Cornell.
On Tuesday morning the government played audio recordings between Hova and Peaceful that purportedly showed that Peaceful ordered the Charlotte Latin Kings to bring firearms to Greensboro. Courtroom spectators had difficulty understanding the recordings. The government provided transcripts to members of the jury to help them make sense of them.
Bello testified that he had some difficulty making the trip to Greensboro because he didn’t have transportation. He couldn’t scrounge up the money for a Greyhound bus ticket. But Hova had access to a rental car, and they stashed the two firearms in the trunk and hit the road.
The car was stopped in Greensboro on Interstate 85 near Groometown Road, and a Guilford County Sheriff’s deputy confiscated the weapons. Detective Herbert Sampson testified on Tuesday that he made the stop at the request of Detective John Lowes, and knew that the weapons would be in the trunk.
“You knew that the driver of that vehicle was working with Detective Lowes and the government?” Assistant US Attorney Robert AJ Lang asked.
“Yes, sir,” Sampson testified.
Under cross-examination, the deputy testified that he charged Lugo for the firearms to help him maintain his cover as a confidential informer.
Cornell was shot by an unknown assailant outside the Cedar West apartments in Greensboro where Yates lived at the time. One bullet struck his leg and another tore through his shoulder and exited his chest. Cornell later told YES! Weekly that a doctor told him he might die.
Shortly after the shooting Cornell publicly expressed forgiveness to whomever might have shot him through the Rev. Nelson Johnson at a press conference, reiterating his commitment to bringing about a peace agreement among street organizations.
On Monday, Cornell’s public defender, Michael Patrick, submitted an intriguing document with the court that includes a narrative describing a November 2010 encounter between a Greensboro police officer and a Latin King member. The document raises an intriguing possibility about the motive behind Cornell’s shooting and cuts against the narrative promoted by the government that the perpetrator was a member of MS-13.
Included in an e-mail sent by Greensboro police Detective Ernest Cuthbertson, the narrative by an Officer Trimnal describes encountering 31-year-old Gorge Cardenas, who was intoxicated and stranded in a car on the entrance ramp from the Urban Loop to Bryan Boulevard in Greensboro. Trimnal reported that Cardenas confirmed that he was a “26 Trouble Latin King, including a West 28th Street, Chicago address in the narrative. Cardenas showed Trimnal a photo ID with a Winston-Salem address.
Trimnal wrote that Cardenas said that he had been sent to “get close to” and “gather information” on Cornell. The Latin Kings member said, according to Trimnal’s account, that “Jorge’s days were numbered, and that he was about to be ‘taken out.’
“Mr. Cardenas stated that if we (GPD) would stop ‘fucking w/ him… we wouldn’t have to worry about Jorge anymore…,’” the narrative continues. “Mr. Cardenas stated repeatedly that he was sent here to ‘do a job’ and that this ‘shit comes from high up/within.’”
Trimnal said he had nothing to charge Cardenas with, so he and another officer assisted him by pushing his vehicle “completely out of the roadway.”
A former Greensboro Latin King, Allan Jordan, has confirmed in his testimony that there were “two different schools of thought” in the Latin Kings, one from New York and one from Chicago, where the organization was founded. Cornell came to North Carolina from New York, while Yates moved here from Chicago. Jordan testified under cross-examination that initiation into the organization under the Chicago process required candidates to either kill someone or undergo a beating. In contrast, all Latin Kings who have testified for the government have stated that they became members of the North Carolina Latin Kings without having to either commit acts of violence or submit to beatings.
Bello testified today that he was called to a statewide Latin Kings meeting in 2008 in which Yates was a candidate for inca, or statewide leader. Cornell would have been deposed had the vote gone against him. Defense attorneys have sought, with mixed success, to get former members testifying for the government to acknowledge that they sided with Yates when he left Cornell’s organization.
“As evidence in this case last week has demonstrated, various dissident groups of persons fell out with Mr. Cornell and may have been motivated to engage in hostile actions against him,” Patrick wrote in a motion filed on Monday. “The government’s indictment contends that despite these splits, the Latin Kings remained a single enterprise as charged in the indictment, so this evidence of a split is relevant as to the issue of the enterprise charged as well as motivation of possible witnesses in this case. It is also relevant to disprove the contention by some of the government witnesses who split with Mr. Cornell that Mr. Cornell directed violence toward them after the split despite their desire to peacefully leave the Latin Kings.”
Patrick also indicated in the motion that Greensboro police Officer P. Caffey, one of the government’s prospective witnesses, had told prosecutor Robert AJ Lang that one of the prospective defense witnesses had told her that he shot Cornell. (Cardenas’ name was not on the prospective defense witness list.) During jury selection Patrick said he had requested a copy of a report of Caffey’s interview with the prospective defense witness considering that it potentially affected the credibility of Caffey and the unnamed prospective witness, but that the government has not provided the document. Since that time, the government has submitted an amended witness list with Caffey’s name removed.
Patrick is requesting that the government provide investigative files related to the threats against Cornell, including any that might tend to support the defendant’s innocence under the so-called Brady rule.
The government also called witnesses, including police officers and a neighbor, who provided testimony about an August home invasion and assault after Cornell was shot. Greensboro police Detective Edward Bruscino testified that, responding to a 911 emergency call, he found Louis Young at his home on Kindley Street with a towel over his head and blood coming from his head.
“He told me he was sleeping, and he awoke with a bunch of young boys in his house,” Bruscino testified. “One of the young boys asked him where he was. He said he did not know what he was talking about. One of the young boys hit him with a bottle, and asked him again where he was. He again said he didn’t know what he was talking about.”
The jury had the opportunity to look at a photograph of the bloody gash on Young’s forehead.
Greensboro police Officer Dean D’Andrea executed a traffic stop based on a description of the vehicle the attackers were driving on the night of the assault. Bruscino testified that he brought Young to the scene and asked him if he recognized any of the young men. The officer said young identified Anthony Vasquez as the person who struck him with the bottle, and also recognized Yates.
Latin Kings members said in a community meeting shortly after the assault that on the same day an unidentified man had invaded the home of Latin Kings friend Cara Williams and attacked Hova. They realized belatedly that they had targeted they had retaliated against the wrong person. Young received a written apology from Cornell, a detail that has not to date been shared with the jury.
Vasquez testified that he separated from Cornell’s group in late 2008 or early 2009. Around that time, he said, he started receiving payments from the government, which eventually totaled about $2,500, as a reward for his cooperation. He also testified that he received an “immunity letter” from the government in exchange for his testimony.
Randy Bello, a Charlotte Latin King with the street name of Drama, testified that King Peaceful, who is Russell Kilfoil and Cornell’s biological brother, called him and told him “to bring whatever guns I could” after the shooting.
Cornell and Kilfoil are both defendants in the criminal racketeering trial, along with four others. Six defendants have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the government. Another defendant, Jason Paul Yates, was severed from the case after his lawyer told the court she was unprepared to go to trial, and his case will be tried separately.
Bello said Peaceful arranged for him to pick up a .45-caliber handgun from a Bloods member in Charlotte. Bello also testified that he had a .32-caliber handgun that he offered to the Greensboro Latin Kings. But he appeared to hold reservations about sharing it with the Greensboro Latin Kings, telling another Charlotte Latin King, Hova, at the time: “This shit already got a head on it.”
As he explained to the jury on Tuesday, “That means it’s dirty. It’s a stolen gun.”
What Bello didn’t know at the time is that Hova, who is Jose Lugo, was recording their conversation as a confidential informant wearing a wire for the government.
The government contends in its indictment that in early August 2008 Cornell and Kilfoil ordered Latin Kings members to bring firearms from Charlotte to Greensboro to be used in a retaliatory strike against MS-13 members who had shot Cornell.
On Tuesday morning the government played audio recordings between Hova and Peaceful that purportedly showed that Peaceful ordered the Charlotte Latin Kings to bring firearms to Greensboro. Courtroom spectators had difficulty understanding the recordings. The government provided transcripts to members of the jury to help them make sense of them.
Bello testified that he had some difficulty making the trip to Greensboro because he didn’t have transportation. He couldn’t scrounge up the money for a Greyhound bus ticket. But Hova had access to a rental car, and they stashed the two firearms in the trunk and hit the road.
The car was stopped in Greensboro on Interstate 85 near Groometown Road, and a Guilford County Sheriff’s deputy confiscated the weapons. Detective Herbert Sampson testified on Tuesday that he made the stop at the request of Detective John Lowes, and knew that the weapons would be in the trunk.
“You knew that the driver of that vehicle was working with Detective Lowes and the government?” Assistant US Attorney Robert AJ Lang asked.
“Yes, sir,” Sampson testified.
Under cross-examination, the deputy testified that he charged Lugo for the firearms to help him maintain his cover as a confidential informer.
Cornell was shot by an unknown assailant outside the Cedar West apartments in Greensboro where Yates lived at the time. One bullet struck his leg and another tore through his shoulder and exited his chest. Cornell later told YES! Weekly that a doctor told him he might die.
Shortly after the shooting Cornell publicly expressed forgiveness to whomever might have shot him through the Rev. Nelson Johnson at a press conference, reiterating his commitment to bringing about a peace agreement among street organizations.
On Monday, Cornell’s public defender, Michael Patrick, submitted an intriguing document with the court that includes a narrative describing a November 2010 encounter between a Greensboro police officer and a Latin King member. The document raises an intriguing possibility about the motive behind Cornell’s shooting and cuts against the narrative promoted by the government that the perpetrator was a member of MS-13.
Included in an e-mail sent by Greensboro police Detective Ernest Cuthbertson, the narrative by an Officer Trimnal describes encountering 31-year-old Gorge Cardenas, who was intoxicated and stranded in a car on the entrance ramp from the Urban Loop to Bryan Boulevard in Greensboro. Trimnal reported that Cardenas confirmed that he was a “26 Trouble Latin King, including a West 28th Street, Chicago address in the narrative. Cardenas showed Trimnal a photo ID with a Winston-Salem address.
Trimnal wrote that Cardenas said that he had been sent to “get close to” and “gather information” on Cornell. The Latin Kings member said, according to Trimnal’s account, that “Jorge’s days were numbered, and that he was about to be ‘taken out.’
“Mr. Cardenas stated that if we (GPD) would stop ‘fucking w/ him… we wouldn’t have to worry about Jorge anymore…,’” the narrative continues. “Mr. Cardenas stated repeatedly that he was sent here to ‘do a job’ and that this ‘shit comes from high up/within.’”
Trimnal said he had nothing to charge Cardenas with, so he and another officer assisted him by pushing his vehicle “completely out of the roadway.”
A former Greensboro Latin King, Allan Jordan, has confirmed in his testimony that there were “two different schools of thought” in the Latin Kings, one from New York and one from Chicago, where the organization was founded. Cornell came to North Carolina from New York, while Yates moved here from Chicago. Jordan testified under cross-examination that initiation into the organization under the Chicago process required candidates to either kill someone or undergo a beating. In contrast, all Latin Kings who have testified for the government have stated that they became members of the North Carolina Latin Kings without having to either commit acts of violence or submit to beatings.
Bello testified today that he was called to a statewide Latin Kings meeting in 2008 in which Yates was a candidate for inca, or statewide leader. Cornell would have been deposed had the vote gone against him. Defense attorneys have sought, with mixed success, to get former members testifying for the government to acknowledge that they sided with Yates when he left Cornell’s organization.
“As evidence in this case last week has demonstrated, various dissident groups of persons fell out with Mr. Cornell and may have been motivated to engage in hostile actions against him,” Patrick wrote in a motion filed on Monday. “The government’s indictment contends that despite these splits, the Latin Kings remained a single enterprise as charged in the indictment, so this evidence of a split is relevant as to the issue of the enterprise charged as well as motivation of possible witnesses in this case. It is also relevant to disprove the contention by some of the government witnesses who split with Mr. Cornell that Mr. Cornell directed violence toward them after the split despite their desire to peacefully leave the Latin Kings.”
Patrick also indicated in the motion that Greensboro police Officer P. Caffey, one of the government’s prospective witnesses, had told prosecutor Robert AJ Lang that one of the prospective defense witnesses had told her that he shot Cornell. (Cardenas’ name was not on the prospective defense witness list.) During jury selection Patrick said he had requested a copy of a report of Caffey’s interview with the prospective defense witness considering that it potentially affected the credibility of Caffey and the unnamed prospective witness, but that the government has not provided the document. Since that time, the government has submitted an amended witness list with Caffey’s name removed.
Patrick is requesting that the government provide investigative files related to the threats against Cornell, including any that might tend to support the defendant’s innocence under the so-called Brady rule.
The government also called witnesses, including police officers and a neighbor, who provided testimony about an August home invasion and assault after Cornell was shot. Greensboro police Detective Edward Bruscino testified that, responding to a 911 emergency call, he found Louis Young at his home on Kindley Street with a towel over his head and blood coming from his head.
“He told me he was sleeping, and he awoke with a bunch of young boys in his house,” Bruscino testified. “One of the young boys asked him where he was. He said he did not know what he was talking about. One of the young boys hit him with a bottle, and asked him again where he was. He again said he didn’t know what he was talking about.”
The jury had the opportunity to look at a photograph of the bloody gash on Young’s forehead.
Greensboro police Officer Dean D’Andrea executed a traffic stop based on a description of the vehicle the attackers were driving on the night of the assault. Bruscino testified that he brought Young to the scene and asked him if he recognized any of the young men. The officer said young identified Anthony Vasquez as the person who struck him with the bottle, and also recognized Yates.
Latin Kings members said in a community meeting shortly after the assault that on the same day an unidentified man had invaded the home of Latin Kings friend Cara Williams and attacked Hova. They realized belatedly that they had targeted they had retaliated against the wrong person. Young received a written apology from Cornell, a detail that has not to date been shared with the jury.
Vasquez testified that he separated from Cornell’s group in late 2008 or early 2009. Around that time, he said, he started receiving payments from the government, which eventually totaled about $2,500, as a reward for his cooperation. He also testified that he received an “immunity letter” from the government in exchange for his testimony.
Day 6: North Carolina Latin Kings on trial
Marcelo Ysrael Perez, who identified himself as a former statewide enforcer for the North Carolina Latin Kings, testified on Monday afternoon that Jorge Cornell, the group’s leader, ordered him to shoot someone in retaliation for an altercation with members of the rival MS-13 gang in Greensboro in April 2008.
Perez has pleaded guilty to discharging a firearm in violation of federal law as part of a criminal racketeering enterprise in connection with the shooting. Perez admitted to shooting a man at Maplewood Apartments in Greensboro, and then fleeing first to Charlotte and later to New York. He was arrested last December shortly before the US government unsealed the racketeering indictment against the Latin Kings.
Perez, whose street name is King Sacrifice, took the witness stand in horn-rimmed glasses, a beard, an orange Guilford County Jail-issued jumpsuit and leg irons.
He said he was about 17 years old when he first encountered a member of the New York Latin Kings while locked up in a county jail on Long Island. He said a member of the Latin Kings later started talking to him about the organization while he was working at a bar with his uncle.
“The nation was about uplifting our people,” Perez testified. “Fighting for our rights. Being a voice for them.”
But he also said that he carried out violent “missions” on behalf of the New York Latin Kings, including one where he “ended up cracking somebody upside the head with a pipe.”
Like other Latin King members who have testified to date in the trial, Perez said he went through observation and probation periods before receiving full membership. He said he learned the organization’s structure and “the way we should move, the way we should speak, the way we should conduct ourselves.”
Perez left the New York Latin Kings at the age of 21 or 22, he testified. He gave a variety of reasons for his break, starting with a hospital stay.
“Nobody came to see me,” Perez testified. “I felt abandoned.”
“My tribe turned on my first crown,” he said, referring to the top person in the chapter. “When they turned on him, the love was fading away.”
To get away from the Latin Kings, Perez said, he moved with his mother and other family members to Charlotte in 2006 or 2007. As a result of his decision to leave, Perez said Latin Kings in New York issued an order of “termination on sight” against him, and a member advised him “not to come back because they were planning to kill me.”
Perez said his brother encountered some Latin Kings at a gas station in Charlotte, and told him that they wanted to meet him.
“Why did you go over there if you didn’t want to be involved?” Assistant US Attorney Robert AJ Lang asked.
“Because my brother was there, and I didn’t want to leave him hanging,” Perez answered.
He met with two members, Flaco and Hova. He said he exchanged salutes with them by throwing hand signs.
“They introduced me to a couple more brothers because they were building a tribe,” Perez testified.
“Flaco told me he was the inca,” he added, using the term for a statewide leader.
Michael Patrick, the public defender for defendant Jorge Cornell, indicated during cross-examination last week that Hova wore a wire for the FBI as a paid information, and suggested he was an “agent provocateur.”
Perez testified that he learned that he knew Flaco’s “baby mom,” making it all the more difficult to distance himself from the group. “I started reporting to Flaco and his tribe,” Perez said. “His baby mom knows where I hang out.”
His experience in New York allowed him to advance quickly in the Charlotte tribe, or chapter, Perez testified.
“It wasn’t as organized,” he said. “It was getting there. I started organizing it further because I had more experience than anyone else.”
Eventually, Perez testified, he clashed with Flaco after other members reported to him that the first crown was ordering them to commit robberies to make money for him.
“A king isn’t a thief in my eyes,” Perez testified. “A brother in a position, you’re not supposed to use them for self-benefit.
“I advised the brothers that I wanted to take a vote,” he added. “I wanted to step Flaco down.”
Meanwhile, Perez said, Flaco and Hova had discovered that there was another group claiming to be Latin Kings in Greensboro. Perez recalled that Flaco told the Charlotte group that the Greensboro kings wanted to meet them. Perez said he was wary.
“I was preparing for war,” he said.
The initial meeting took place at a gas station in Charlotte, Perez said. Twelve to 16 Greensboro members were there, as was Flaco. Perez carried a .38-caliber pistol in his waistband. Later, they decided to move to an apartment complex parking lot. Perez said he sat in a car next to Hype, who is defendant Samuel Velasquez. Hype talked on a cell phone with someone.
“When he felt comfortable,” Perez testified, “Jay Cornell stepped out of a vehicle.”
Cornell “advised me of his position,” Perez said. “He advised me that we had to report to him.” Greensboro, Perez said, was recognized as “the mother tribe.”
Perez said Cornell summoned, him, Flaco and other Charlotte members to Greensboro for a “trial” to resolve the differences between Perez and Flaco.
“They took us individually into a room,” Perez recounted. “They interviewed us individually. They wanted to find out the truth, find out who’s at fault…. He wanted to settle the differences so he can start a structure in Charlotte.”
Ultimately, Perez indicated, Cornell attempted to satisfy both parties. “He gave Flaco first crown of Charlotte,” Perez testified.
“He told me not to worry about it because he had plans for me. Later, he told me he was going to make me a supreme…. That’s someone who has authorization for the state.”
Perez said he had been having some trouble with his family in Charlotte, and accepted an invitation from Cornell to move to Greensboro. He joined Cornell in the apartment where he lived with Jason Paul Yates, another federal racketeering defendant whose case has been severed from the others.
Perez said Cornell named him third supreme, a position that gave him responsibility for enforcement across the state. He said the Latin Kings feuded with Sureños, Crips, Folks, some Bloods and, particularly, MS-13.
Anthony Vasquez, a Latin King known as Menace, testified last week that he hit a man with a baseball bat in early 2008 because the man pulled a gun on him. Perez said Cornell treated Vasquez like “the golden child.”
“He was being groomed to be the next inca of the state,” Perez testified. “Menace was the first person recruited to the Latin Kings in Greensboro. He was his first pupil, his first student. It was like his son.”
Perez, Vasquez and some other Latin Kings encountered trouble when they went to Maplewood Apartments. Perez said the purpose of the visit was to check on a “sister” — a female Latin King member, or queen — who wasn’t reporting for meetings and carrying out her other responsibilities. Vasquez had testified that they were there to pick something up. Perez said some female members of MS-13 spotted Vasquez and turned their heads quickly when they recognized him.
“We got swarmed by two or three vehicles,” Perez recalled. “An individual stepped out of the car with some kind of farm tool, a stick with four picks.… The person who Menace hit with a bat was also there. He proceeded to tell us his problem wasn’t with us. It was with Menace.”
In a chaotic sequence of events, Perez said one of the MS-13 members started chasing Menace and King Dice, who is defendant Irvin Vasquez, in turn, started chasing the MS-13 member. Perez said he was watching one of the MS-13 members who appeared to have a gun, and was preparing to try to take it from him if he tried to use it. As the confrontation unfolded, Perez said he was upset with himself that he had failed to bring his own gun.
He said he ordered Sylvia Lugo, known as Queen Blaze, to get in the car and run the MS-13 members down, but she panicked and tried to flee instead. Perez said Dice pulled Blaze out of the car and took the wheel. Blaze and everyone else ran down into some woods and across a creek. Eventually they came out on the road, and piled into the waiting car driven by Dice.
Vasquez had testified that he received a concussion in the encounter. Perez testified that Vasquez told him he sustained the injury in a fall when he was fleeing the scene. Perez recalled that Vasquez got sick and started throwing up. They took him to Moses Cone hospital.
“Word got back to Jay,” Perez said. “When something like that happens the first thing you do is call the top person. Brothers started arriving. Jay called other brothers and started grouping up.”
Lang asked Perez what was discussed at the apartment where Cornell and Yates lived.
“He wanted retaliation right then and there,” Perez said. “He wanted anybody.”
Earlier in the day, Patrick had cross-examined Sylvia Lugo and asked her to review a May 22, 2008 statement she gave to a Greensboro police investigator.
“On that day you told them Sacrifice is the one that said, ‘We’re going over to Maplewood to retaliate,’” Patrick said. “Is that right?”
“Yes,” Lugo replied.
“You didn’t indicate to law enforcement [at that time] anything about Mr. Cornell saying, ‘We’re going over to Maplewood to retaliate,’ did you?” Patrick asked.
“I did tell them,” said Lugo, who testified that her memory of many events was not clear.
Patrick also challenged the testimony Perez gave under direct examination by the prosecutor.
“You weren’t all hopping around, urging people to go?” Patrick asked.
“If we had orders to go, I was going to encourage people to go,” Perez responded.
Perez testified under direct examination that he started cleaning three guns.
“Me and Jay Cornell stated debating,” Perez said. “I didn’t agree with his decision. He wanted to go out there with guns blazing. That’s not a smart move. When you’re trying to do a hit you don’t want any witnesses. He wasn’t hearing it. He wanted revenge.”
Perez testified that he took another member with him to Maplewood Apartments and was relieved to find no one was there.
When they returned, Perez said he argued with Cornell again.
“He started screaming at me,” Perez said. “Telling me it was my fault that Menace got hurt.”
Perez said under Cornell’s orders he got in one car with two other members, Cornell got in another, and they went back to Maplewood Apartments. Perez had a shotgun and the others also had firearms.
When they reached the apartment complex, Perez said he, Dice and a king named Munchy got out of the car and walked along the length of the apartments. Three people watched them from behind a sliding door, Perez said, adding that they “were mean-mugging us,” or staring. Perez took up a defensive position behind a tree in case one of the people in the apartment started firing. Then the three walked back and passed the individuals in the apartment again.
“These individuals are not retreating,” Perez recalled. “In my experience if you see someone with a shotgun and you’re not retreating that means you’re ready for a confrontation. When I turned, I saw my mark. I saw his face and I recognized him. He turned and I thought he might be reaching for a weapon, so I shot him with a shotgun.
“The dude flew,” Perez added. “The impact of the shotgun, it tossed him back.”
Perez said he recognized his victim from the confrontation earlier that day. But Rojelio Lopez told the jury in testimony on Monday morning that he had been a construction worker at the time and, in fact, was not a member of MS-13 or any other gang.
Greensboro police Sgt. PM Buser, who responded to the scene, said she cut off Lopez’s shirt and found that his arm and abdomen had been shot multiple times with birdshot. He stanched the bleeding until the ambulance arrived.
Perez expressed remorse for the shooting.
“I remember when I got back to Dice’s girl’s house I got down on my knees and prayed,” he told the jury. “I prayed for that man to live.
“I really felt in my heart that I did the ultimate sin — that I murdered someone,” he added. “I didn’t know he lived. That don’t feel too good on someone’s heart.”
After the shooting, Perez said the two carloads of Latin Kings headed back to Yates’ apartment, with Cornell’s vehicle in the lead. He said when he tried to enter the apartment, Cornell pushed him and told him: “Get out of here.”
He said he stashed the gun somewhere and tried to figure out what to do next. Then, Yates pulled up with Munchy and told him to get in. They went to Hooter’s, and Perez excused himself to go to the bathroom.
“I flushed the shell down the toilet,” he said. “I pissed on my hand to cover up the residue of the gunpowder.”
Later, he spoke with Cornell.
“He told me I put a smile on his face,” Perez recalled. “He meant that by me shooting that individual I made him happy.”
A universal meeting, a gathering of Latin Kings from across the state, was called, Perez testified, adding that the meeting took place in an unspecified cemetery.
“I was standing in the middle of the 360 [circle],” Perez said. “I was the one preaching. I was talking about the black and gold, and how we had to stand together.”
Perez said at the universal Cornell issued a “black rose,” an order to maintain silence about the shooting. Perez returned to Charlotte, and later to New York, cutting off communication with Cornell in the process.
“He told Drama to tell me to go underground,” Perez testified. “He wanted to distance himself from this incident, and play innocent.”
Less than three months after the Maplewood shooting Cornell, Yates and several other members appeared at a press conference called by the Pulpit Forum, a group of African-American pastors who frequently spoke out on social justice issues. Six days earlier, the US government had announced the indictment of 31 members of MS-13 for racketeering and other crimes in North Carolina.
Cornell announced at the Beloved Community Center that he was attempting to bring together street groups for a peace agreement.
“So what I’m asking these leaders to do is, if you got one that’s going to start trouble with the other, don’t let those two get physical,” Cornell said. “And if it does, don’t let it cause a war. Let’s bring it to the attention of those leaders, and let those leaders deal with their own instead of us dealing with their own. And if that means kicking them out, that’s what it means.”
At the time, Perez was a fugitive and was wanted by the Greensboro Police Department for attempted first-degree murder.
News & Record Editorial Editor Allen Johnson confronted Cornell about the warrant.
“It’s a very strong policy I have against selling drugs, and against robbing and stealing,” Cornell said at the press conference. “You can tell them not to do something, but at the end of the day, if an individual wants to do something and they go out and do it, we’ll have to deal with it the way we have to deal with it. If we get rid of him, we get rid of him…. You will no longer be a king.”
Under direct examination on Monday, Perez told the jury: “I never got stripped…. I still haven’t been stripped, so technically I’m still a king right now.”
Perez said his motivation for pleading guilty and cooperating with the government was that “by telling the truth, and only by telling the truth, I may be able to receive a time cut.” His testimony was courteous, clear and composed under questioning from both the government and defense attorneys.
Patrick asked Perez if had been convicted in Nassau County on Long Island for possession of a controlled substance. Perez responded that the case is in the process of being dismissed. He acknowledged that his conviction for racketeering could result in a sentence of life in prison if the government does file a request for leniency in exchange for substantial assistance.
Helen Parsonage, the public defender for defendant Irvin Vasquez, tried to batter Perez’s credibility by questioning his decision to rejoin the Latin Kings in Charlotte. Perez said in response that he hadn’t told his family that the New York Latin Kings had a “terminate on sight” order on him, and his brother didn’t know any better when he revealed to the Charlotte Latin Kings that Perez was a member. He said his family would have been in danger if he had rebuffed the Latin Kings.
Then Parsonage asked Perez why he returned to New York.
“It was the only place I knew how to maneuver… how to survive,” Perez said.
“Had it occurred to you to go someplace else — like Alaska?” Parsonage asked.
“It occurred to me to go where I knew I had support,” Perez said.
“And where you had a ‘terminate on sight’ order,” Parsonage added.
Perez has pleaded guilty to discharging a firearm in violation of federal law as part of a criminal racketeering enterprise in connection with the shooting. Perez admitted to shooting a man at Maplewood Apartments in Greensboro, and then fleeing first to Charlotte and later to New York. He was arrested last December shortly before the US government unsealed the racketeering indictment against the Latin Kings.
Perez, whose street name is King Sacrifice, took the witness stand in horn-rimmed glasses, a beard, an orange Guilford County Jail-issued jumpsuit and leg irons.
He said he was about 17 years old when he first encountered a member of the New York Latin Kings while locked up in a county jail on Long Island. He said a member of the Latin Kings later started talking to him about the organization while he was working at a bar with his uncle.
“The nation was about uplifting our people,” Perez testified. “Fighting for our rights. Being a voice for them.”
But he also said that he carried out violent “missions” on behalf of the New York Latin Kings, including one where he “ended up cracking somebody upside the head with a pipe.”
Like other Latin King members who have testified to date in the trial, Perez said he went through observation and probation periods before receiving full membership. He said he learned the organization’s structure and “the way we should move, the way we should speak, the way we should conduct ourselves.”
Perez left the New York Latin Kings at the age of 21 or 22, he testified. He gave a variety of reasons for his break, starting with a hospital stay.
“Nobody came to see me,” Perez testified. “I felt abandoned.”
“My tribe turned on my first crown,” he said, referring to the top person in the chapter. “When they turned on him, the love was fading away.”
To get away from the Latin Kings, Perez said, he moved with his mother and other family members to Charlotte in 2006 or 2007. As a result of his decision to leave, Perez said Latin Kings in New York issued an order of “termination on sight” against him, and a member advised him “not to come back because they were planning to kill me.”
Perez said his brother encountered some Latin Kings at a gas station in Charlotte, and told him that they wanted to meet him.
“Why did you go over there if you didn’t want to be involved?” Assistant US Attorney Robert AJ Lang asked.
“Because my brother was there, and I didn’t want to leave him hanging,” Perez answered.
He met with two members, Flaco and Hova. He said he exchanged salutes with them by throwing hand signs.
“They introduced me to a couple more brothers because they were building a tribe,” Perez testified.
“Flaco told me he was the inca,” he added, using the term for a statewide leader.
Michael Patrick, the public defender for defendant Jorge Cornell, indicated during cross-examination last week that Hova wore a wire for the FBI as a paid information, and suggested he was an “agent provocateur.”
Perez testified that he learned that he knew Flaco’s “baby mom,” making it all the more difficult to distance himself from the group. “I started reporting to Flaco and his tribe,” Perez said. “His baby mom knows where I hang out.”
His experience in New York allowed him to advance quickly in the Charlotte tribe, or chapter, Perez testified.
“It wasn’t as organized,” he said. “It was getting there. I started organizing it further because I had more experience than anyone else.”
Eventually, Perez testified, he clashed with Flaco after other members reported to him that the first crown was ordering them to commit robberies to make money for him.
“A king isn’t a thief in my eyes,” Perez testified. “A brother in a position, you’re not supposed to use them for self-benefit.
“I advised the brothers that I wanted to take a vote,” he added. “I wanted to step Flaco down.”
Meanwhile, Perez said, Flaco and Hova had discovered that there was another group claiming to be Latin Kings in Greensboro. Perez recalled that Flaco told the Charlotte group that the Greensboro kings wanted to meet them. Perez said he was wary.
“I was preparing for war,” he said.
The initial meeting took place at a gas station in Charlotte, Perez said. Twelve to 16 Greensboro members were there, as was Flaco. Perez carried a .38-caliber pistol in his waistband. Later, they decided to move to an apartment complex parking lot. Perez said he sat in a car next to Hype, who is defendant Samuel Velasquez. Hype talked on a cell phone with someone.
“When he felt comfortable,” Perez testified, “Jay Cornell stepped out of a vehicle.”
Cornell “advised me of his position,” Perez said. “He advised me that we had to report to him.” Greensboro, Perez said, was recognized as “the mother tribe.”
Perez said Cornell summoned, him, Flaco and other Charlotte members to Greensboro for a “trial” to resolve the differences between Perez and Flaco.
“They took us individually into a room,” Perez recounted. “They interviewed us individually. They wanted to find out the truth, find out who’s at fault…. He wanted to settle the differences so he can start a structure in Charlotte.”
Ultimately, Perez indicated, Cornell attempted to satisfy both parties. “He gave Flaco first crown of Charlotte,” Perez testified.
“He told me not to worry about it because he had plans for me. Later, he told me he was going to make me a supreme…. That’s someone who has authorization for the state.”
Perez said he had been having some trouble with his family in Charlotte, and accepted an invitation from Cornell to move to Greensboro. He joined Cornell in the apartment where he lived with Jason Paul Yates, another federal racketeering defendant whose case has been severed from the others.
Perez said Cornell named him third supreme, a position that gave him responsibility for enforcement across the state. He said the Latin Kings feuded with Sureños, Crips, Folks, some Bloods and, particularly, MS-13.
Anthony Vasquez, a Latin King known as Menace, testified last week that he hit a man with a baseball bat in early 2008 because the man pulled a gun on him. Perez said Cornell treated Vasquez like “the golden child.”
“He was being groomed to be the next inca of the state,” Perez testified. “Menace was the first person recruited to the Latin Kings in Greensboro. He was his first pupil, his first student. It was like his son.”
Perez, Vasquez and some other Latin Kings encountered trouble when they went to Maplewood Apartments. Perez said the purpose of the visit was to check on a “sister” — a female Latin King member, or queen — who wasn’t reporting for meetings and carrying out her other responsibilities. Vasquez had testified that they were there to pick something up. Perez said some female members of MS-13 spotted Vasquez and turned their heads quickly when they recognized him.
“We got swarmed by two or three vehicles,” Perez recalled. “An individual stepped out of the car with some kind of farm tool, a stick with four picks.… The person who Menace hit with a bat was also there. He proceeded to tell us his problem wasn’t with us. It was with Menace.”
In a chaotic sequence of events, Perez said one of the MS-13 members started chasing Menace and King Dice, who is defendant Irvin Vasquez, in turn, started chasing the MS-13 member. Perez said he was watching one of the MS-13 members who appeared to have a gun, and was preparing to try to take it from him if he tried to use it. As the confrontation unfolded, Perez said he was upset with himself that he had failed to bring his own gun.
He said he ordered Sylvia Lugo, known as Queen Blaze, to get in the car and run the MS-13 members down, but she panicked and tried to flee instead. Perez said Dice pulled Blaze out of the car and took the wheel. Blaze and everyone else ran down into some woods and across a creek. Eventually they came out on the road, and piled into the waiting car driven by Dice.
Vasquez had testified that he received a concussion in the encounter. Perez testified that Vasquez told him he sustained the injury in a fall when he was fleeing the scene. Perez recalled that Vasquez got sick and started throwing up. They took him to Moses Cone hospital.
“Word got back to Jay,” Perez said. “When something like that happens the first thing you do is call the top person. Brothers started arriving. Jay called other brothers and started grouping up.”
Lang asked Perez what was discussed at the apartment where Cornell and Yates lived.
“He wanted retaliation right then and there,” Perez said. “He wanted anybody.”
Earlier in the day, Patrick had cross-examined Sylvia Lugo and asked her to review a May 22, 2008 statement she gave to a Greensboro police investigator.
“On that day you told them Sacrifice is the one that said, ‘We’re going over to Maplewood to retaliate,’” Patrick said. “Is that right?”
“Yes,” Lugo replied.
“You didn’t indicate to law enforcement [at that time] anything about Mr. Cornell saying, ‘We’re going over to Maplewood to retaliate,’ did you?” Patrick asked.
“I did tell them,” said Lugo, who testified that her memory of many events was not clear.
Patrick also challenged the testimony Perez gave under direct examination by the prosecutor.
“You weren’t all hopping around, urging people to go?” Patrick asked.
“If we had orders to go, I was going to encourage people to go,” Perez responded.
Perez testified under direct examination that he started cleaning three guns.
“Me and Jay Cornell stated debating,” Perez said. “I didn’t agree with his decision. He wanted to go out there with guns blazing. That’s not a smart move. When you’re trying to do a hit you don’t want any witnesses. He wasn’t hearing it. He wanted revenge.”
Perez testified that he took another member with him to Maplewood Apartments and was relieved to find no one was there.
When they returned, Perez said he argued with Cornell again.
“He started screaming at me,” Perez said. “Telling me it was my fault that Menace got hurt.”
Perez said under Cornell’s orders he got in one car with two other members, Cornell got in another, and they went back to Maplewood Apartments. Perez had a shotgun and the others also had firearms.
When they reached the apartment complex, Perez said he, Dice and a king named Munchy got out of the car and walked along the length of the apartments. Three people watched them from behind a sliding door, Perez said, adding that they “were mean-mugging us,” or staring. Perez took up a defensive position behind a tree in case one of the people in the apartment started firing. Then the three walked back and passed the individuals in the apartment again.
“These individuals are not retreating,” Perez recalled. “In my experience if you see someone with a shotgun and you’re not retreating that means you’re ready for a confrontation. When I turned, I saw my mark. I saw his face and I recognized him. He turned and I thought he might be reaching for a weapon, so I shot him with a shotgun.
“The dude flew,” Perez added. “The impact of the shotgun, it tossed him back.”
Perez said he recognized his victim from the confrontation earlier that day. But Rojelio Lopez told the jury in testimony on Monday morning that he had been a construction worker at the time and, in fact, was not a member of MS-13 or any other gang.
Greensboro police Sgt. PM Buser, who responded to the scene, said she cut off Lopez’s shirt and found that his arm and abdomen had been shot multiple times with birdshot. He stanched the bleeding until the ambulance arrived.
Perez expressed remorse for the shooting.
“I remember when I got back to Dice’s girl’s house I got down on my knees and prayed,” he told the jury. “I prayed for that man to live.
“I really felt in my heart that I did the ultimate sin — that I murdered someone,” he added. “I didn’t know he lived. That don’t feel too good on someone’s heart.”
After the shooting, Perez said the two carloads of Latin Kings headed back to Yates’ apartment, with Cornell’s vehicle in the lead. He said when he tried to enter the apartment, Cornell pushed him and told him: “Get out of here.”
He said he stashed the gun somewhere and tried to figure out what to do next. Then, Yates pulled up with Munchy and told him to get in. They went to Hooter’s, and Perez excused himself to go to the bathroom.
“I flushed the shell down the toilet,” he said. “I pissed on my hand to cover up the residue of the gunpowder.”
Later, he spoke with Cornell.
“He told me I put a smile on his face,” Perez recalled. “He meant that by me shooting that individual I made him happy.”
A universal meeting, a gathering of Latin Kings from across the state, was called, Perez testified, adding that the meeting took place in an unspecified cemetery.
“I was standing in the middle of the 360 [circle],” Perez said. “I was the one preaching. I was talking about the black and gold, and how we had to stand together.”
Perez said at the universal Cornell issued a “black rose,” an order to maintain silence about the shooting. Perez returned to Charlotte, and later to New York, cutting off communication with Cornell in the process.
“He told Drama to tell me to go underground,” Perez testified. “He wanted to distance himself from this incident, and play innocent.”
Less than three months after the Maplewood shooting Cornell, Yates and several other members appeared at a press conference called by the Pulpit Forum, a group of African-American pastors who frequently spoke out on social justice issues. Six days earlier, the US government had announced the indictment of 31 members of MS-13 for racketeering and other crimes in North Carolina.
Cornell announced at the Beloved Community Center that he was attempting to bring together street groups for a peace agreement.
“So what I’m asking these leaders to do is, if you got one that’s going to start trouble with the other, don’t let those two get physical,” Cornell said. “And if it does, don’t let it cause a war. Let’s bring it to the attention of those leaders, and let those leaders deal with their own instead of us dealing with their own. And if that means kicking them out, that’s what it means.”
At the time, Perez was a fugitive and was wanted by the Greensboro Police Department for attempted first-degree murder.
News & Record Editorial Editor Allen Johnson confronted Cornell about the warrant.
“It’s a very strong policy I have against selling drugs, and against robbing and stealing,” Cornell said at the press conference. “You can tell them not to do something, but at the end of the day, if an individual wants to do something and they go out and do it, we’ll have to deal with it the way we have to deal with it. If we get rid of him, we get rid of him…. You will no longer be a king.”
Under direct examination on Monday, Perez told the jury: “I never got stripped…. I still haven’t been stripped, so technically I’m still a king right now.”
Perez said his motivation for pleading guilty and cooperating with the government was that “by telling the truth, and only by telling the truth, I may be able to receive a time cut.” His testimony was courteous, clear and composed under questioning from both the government and defense attorneys.
Patrick asked Perez if had been convicted in Nassau County on Long Island for possession of a controlled substance. Perez responded that the case is in the process of being dismissed. He acknowledged that his conviction for racketeering could result in a sentence of life in prison if the government does file a request for leniency in exchange for substantial assistance.
Helen Parsonage, the public defender for defendant Irvin Vasquez, tried to batter Perez’s credibility by questioning his decision to rejoin the Latin Kings in Charlotte. Perez said in response that he hadn’t told his family that the New York Latin Kings had a “terminate on sight” order on him, and his brother didn’t know any better when he revealed to the Charlotte Latin Kings that Perez was a member. He said his family would have been in danger if he had rebuffed the Latin Kings.
Then Parsonage asked Perez why he returned to New York.
“It was the only place I knew how to maneuver… how to survive,” Perez said.
“Had it occurred to you to go someplace else — like Alaska?” Parsonage asked.
“It occurred to me to go where I knew I had support,” Perez said.
“And where you had a ‘terminate on sight’ order,” Parsonage added.
Little: Burke and Adams 'went south on us' on justice for Kalvin Michael Smith
 |
| Larry Little, Earline Parmon, Augustus Dark and Darryl Hunt (l-r) |
The matter of the Winston-Salem City Council’s closed-session decision to August to not file a “friend of the court” brief requesting that a federal judge grant Kalvin Michael Smith a new trial was raised during a community forum at the Carter G. Woodson School on Saturday that was part of the National Alumni Association of the Black Panther Party.
Smith was convicted in the 1990s of brutally beating Jill Marker, an employee of the Silk Plant Forest store. Many people consider Smith’s case to be a wrongful conviction because the primary witness was unreliable and inconsistent, the brain-damaged victim was inappropriately interviewed and significant leads were not pursued. Former FBI Assistant Director Christopher Swecker said the original investigation “was seriously flawed and woefully incomplete” and a citizens review committee empaneled by the city council found “no credible evidence that Kalvin Michael Smith was at the scene” of the crime on the night of the attack.
The community forum was moderated by Larry Little, a former city councilman and former leader of the Winston-Salem Black Panther Party, and Darryl Hunt, who was wrongfully convicted of the murder of newspaper copy editor Deborah Sykes and later exonerated after spending more than 19 years in prison.
NC Rep. Earline Parmon asked the panelists to explain why “the city decided not to recognize the legal injustice that we’re trying to clean up?”
Little noted that the council initially appeared to be headed in the direction of officially declaring for the judge’s benefit that the investigation was flawed and the verdict questionable, but then “all of a sudden they backed off.”
During a meeting of the public safety committee of the council, five members – a majority – indicated they supported some type of official action to right the injustice, including East Ward Councilman Derwin Montgomery, Southeast Ward Councilman James Taylor, Mayor Pro Tem Vivian Burke, North Ward Councilwoman Denise D. Adams and South Ward Councilwoman Molly Leight.
Montgomery and Taylor stood firm, but when council went into close session to make a decision the majority eroded, with Adams, Burke and Leight peeling off.
Little singled out the two black members of council who switched sides in his comments, while sparing Leight.
“I have to tell you that Vivian Burke and DD Adams went south on us and refused to support the motion for appropriate relief,” Little said. “DD is walking away from these social justice issues, and has for a while. She won’t say it, but I’m telling you, DD – you don’t know what Vivian’s doing – but DD is running from her – she thinks her white constituents don’t want her on these type of issues.”
Little quickly added that “there are a number of white people you can see here who stand for justice,” likely referring to Kim Porter, Will Cox and their two daughters, who are active with Occupy Winston-Salem.
"She said in the meeting: 'Yes, we got to to do something. We got to do something. We got to do something,'" Little recalled. "And then it came to the vote, and she and Vivian backed off and did a 180-degree turn. And so you have to just look at it for what it is."
Adams won the North Ward seat in 2009 after Nelson Malloy, also an alum of the Winston-Salem Black Panther Party, announced his retirement.
Adams said after the council’s decision that the city has demonstrated its commitment by establishing the Silk Plant Forest Citizens Committee, a move that was taken before she was elected to council.
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