High school basketball star Tayshana Murphy was 18 when she was gunned down inside her apartment building in a case that shocked even the most hardened New Yorker. Murphy was one of the nation’s top girls high school basketball prospects when she was shot and killed on Sept. 11, 2011 in the Grant Harlem housing projects.
Edit: Two men, Tyshawn Brockington, 23, and Robert Cartagena were convicted of killing Murphy last year.
Swarms of heavily armed NYPD cops and SWAT teams stormed two Harlem housing projects Wednesday in search of gang members, the NY daily News reports.
40 gang members from the Make It Happen Boys, Money Avenue and 3 Staccs gangs were rudely snatched from their beds and handcuffed. Thirty-nine indicted gang bangers were already in custody, and cops are searching for another 23 gang members in connection with Murphy’s death.
The suspects were between 15 and 30 years old, the Daily News reports.
The carefully coordinated operation is being called the largest gang case in the city’s history.
From NY Daily News:
Capping an investigation that spanned more than four years, more than 100 gang members from three warring crews responsible for at least two homicides and 19 shootings were indicted, officials said. Police Commissioner Bill Bratton personally oversaw the raids of neighboring Manhattanville and Grant housing projects.
“If you choose this lifestyle, you will suffer the same fate as these individuals,” Bratton said at a news conference later in the day.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said the operation was the largest indicted gang case in the city’s history.
“For at least four years, these gangs waged a campaign of violence simply for the sake of violence,” he said.
Social media was a large component of the case, as members used hundreds of Facebook posts and direct messages to plot the deaths of rival gang members, officials said.
A 2011 post on the page of alleged gangbanger Davon (Hef) Goulbourne to rival gang member Brian Cabrera bragged about Murphy’s killing, according to court papers.
Police Commissioner Bratton, center, the Brooklyn Gang Task Force along with various units of NYPD, participate in the raid.
“THASS WHY N—-S FRIED THE CHICKEN,” to which Cabrera allegedly responded, “NOW IMAAA KILL YUHH.”
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