Jason Meisner and Annie SweeneyContact ReportersChicago Tribune
Lifelong Englewood resident Gerald Sias Jr. was getting his hair cut in a popular neighborhood barbershop on a Thursday afternoon two years ago when a gunman suddenly appeared in the doorway and opened fire.
Bullets whizzed into Powell’s Barber Shop on West 63rd Street as patrons scrambled to hide behind chairs. Sias, 38, a father of five with no gang ties, was struck in the arm and died later at a nearby hospital. Another customer was wounded in the leg.
A federal racketeering indictment made public Friday alleged Sias’ May 2016 slaying was one of 10 killings carried out by a South Side street gang faction during a three-year reign of terror in the Englewood community that targeted rivals and innocent victims alike.
The 25-page indictment — first reported by the Chicago Tribune — charges four reputed members of the Goonie Boss faction of the Gangster Disciples with racketeering conspiracy and alleges six attempted murders, two assaults and other violence in addition to the killings — all in or near Englewood from 2014 to 2016.
Unlike traditional racketeering cases that accuse gang members of using violence to protect drug turf or other illicit enterprises, the charges against the Goonie Boss members alleged they shot people simply to boost their social media brand.
“It was killing for the sake of killing,” said Chicago police Sgt. Charles Daly, who helped put the case together.
Among the evidence is a disturbing video that was streamed live on Facebook following the January 2016 murder of a Goonie Squad rival. In the video, about a dozen members of the gang, some as young as 14, wave guns in front of the camera and dance as they taunt the victim, chanting, “How the f--- did he get hit?” and “One in the head, no lie.”
Other victims, like Sias, were just at the wrong place at the wrong time, according to the charges. At Sias’ longtime family home on South Carpenter Street, his father, Gerald Sr., said Friday his son was simply trying to get his hair cut for a party on the day he was killed. Asked about the allegations that the gunmen were committing violence simply for street status, the father called the situation “crazy.”
“You wake up and put your clothes on to go kill somebody that don’t never done nothing to you? That’s crazy,” he said as he stood in his living room with framed photos of his son as a baby and as a toddler still prominently displayed.
According to the indictment, the alleged leader of the Goonie Boss crew was Romeo “O-Dog” Blackman, 22, who was already in custody on federal weapons charges. Also charged with racketeering were Terrance Smith, 22; Jolicious “Jo Jo” Turman, 27; and Nathaniel McElroy, 21.
The charges implicated Blackman in at least seven of the murders.
The charges carry the potential of a death sentence on conviction, but prosecutors have not yet decided whether to seek capital punishment, law enforcement sources told the Tribune.
The investigation was a joint effort by federal law enforcement, Chicago police and the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. In addition to the federal racketeering charges, a fifth defendant was charged in Cook County criminal court with an 11th murder.
At a news conference to announce the charges at the Englewood District police station, Jeffrey Sallet, head of Chicago’s FBI office, said the federal racketeering statute can help law enforcement hold gang members like the Goonies accountable in the same way it was used to decimate more traditional crime syndicates like the Chicago Outfit.
“We are bringing the full weight of the federal government to violence that is plaguing these neighborhoods,” said Sallet, flanked by Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson and U.S. Attorney John Lausch Jr. “We are looking for you, and our people are going to find you.”
In a sign of the fractured and often fickle nature of gang cliques in Chicago, the case was built largely on social media and jail calls, not traditional wiretaps. And unlike some recent gang racketeering cases, the charges alleged the Goonie Boss gang committed a staggering amount of violence in a short period of time.
Sgt. Daly, who also helped bring racketeering charges against the Black Souls several years ago, noted that case spanned 30 years’ worth of violence allegedly committed to protect a narcotics enterprise.
“The Goonies murdered as many, if not more, in the span of three years just to protect their social media status," he said.
Blackman’s attorney, Christopher Grohman, who said Friday that his client was still a teenager when most of the alleged violence occurred, questioned how prosecutors could consider him a gang leader at such a young age. He also criticized the government for bringing what could wind up being a death-penalty case.
McElroy’s attorney, Joshua Kutnick, had no comment on the charges Friday. It was unclear if the other two federal defendants had hired attorneys.
Court records show Blackman is already in custody on separate federal charges alleging he took part in a brazen smash-and-grab burglary of weapons from a gun store in Livingston County in 2016.
According to those charges, he and two associates smashed a stolen Jeep into South Post Guns in Streator before making off with 20 weapons, including a shotgun, a military-style assault rifle, eight pistols and 10 revolvers.
The three later distributed some of the guns in Englewood and kept the rest, police said.
Blackman, who has been held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center since his arrest in April 2017, has pleaded not guilty in that case, records show.
McElroy, meanwhile, is also facing separate charges stemming from an alleged gun-trafficking ring that used “straw purchasers” to buy handguns in Kalamazoo, Mich., and resell them in Chicago. Those charges allege that the crew was responsible for at least nine of the Michigan-bought handguns making it to the streets of Chicago in the first six months of 2017 alone.
At a detention hearing in that case last year, prosecutors played Facebook Live videos showing McElroy and other Goonie Boss members brandishing firearms, taunting rivals and laughing about committing acts of violence, court records show. U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Cox said she found the “glee and exuberance” on the gang members’ faces appalling, according to a transcript.
“I have never seen anything like this in my life,” Cox said. “It is shocking to me that you could laugh about a gun like it is a toy. …Some of those kids look like they were 14 or 15 years old. And this is their life?”
According to the charges, the innocent targets of the gang included Kenneth Whitaker, shot twice in the head in July 2016 while walking past an elementary school at 74th and Morgan streets. At the time, the Goonies were out for revenge after one of their own had been slain earlier that night, sources told the Tribune. They had just left a nearby hospital when they opened fire on Whitaker, 34, a security guard with no gang ties.
Reached Thursday evening, Whitaker’s mother, Vickie, said she had long suspected her son had been the victim of mistaken identity.
“He was a good young man, not affiliated with any gangs,” she said. “He was just trying to make money and take care of his kids.”
Meanwhile, Gerald Sias Sr., whose son was slain in the barber shop, said their tight-knit family moved to Englewood in the 1960s and decided to stay despite the constant threat of violence. Now a medical transport driver, Sias said there is no comprehending the violence that tore his family apart.
“I think about my son all the time,” he said. As he spoke, he brought out a pressed white dress shirt with his son’s image on the back.
Underneath it in black lettering it read, “Love You Son.”
Chicago Tribune’s Rosemary Sobol contributed.
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