Four Charged In 2020 Shooting Of Brooklyn Mom After Illegal Fireworks Dispute

Four members of the Brooklyn-based Ninedee gang now face federal charges in the murder last year of a Brooklyn mom. 

Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York unveiled a nine-count indictment in the case against Quintin "Wild Child" Green, 20, Chayanne "White Boy" Fernandez, 21, Maliek "Leak" Miller, 27, and Kevin "Kev G" Wint, 27, related to the July 2020 killing of Shatavia Walls, 33. The charges in the case include racketeering, murder in-aid-of racketeering, drug trafficking, firearms offenses and robbery, though not all of the defendants are facing all of the charges.

Prosecutors allege that on July 4, 2020, Walls confronted Miller and others as they illegally set off fireworks. Miller and others were reportedly setting off the fireworks in a playground at the Louis Heaton Pink Houses in Brooklyn in which children were actively playing, which is why, Wall's mother Helen Testagros told the New York Daily News, she stepped in.

Miller called Walls a "snitch," shot his gun "in the air" and fled the scene, according to prosecutors. Testagros told the New York Post in 2020 that Miller had fired in her daughter's direction before running away — but that Walls had collected the shell casing and the driver's license Miller dropped in his haste.

The "snitch" moniker may have been because Walls had testified in a federal trial in 2019 against another Pink Houses gang member who had shot her in 2017, according to prosecutors; that matches the description of a 2019 case in which a man with previous convictions on felony charges was convicted on weapons charges related to a 2017 shooting. The man in that case had previously sued the NYPD with Kevin Wint over their arrest in 2012 and was subsequently convicted on drug-related charges.

At the time of her 2019 testimony against the man who shot her, the NY Post reported that gang members posted flyers with Wall's picture and the word "rat" throughout the Pink Houses.

After the July 4 incident over the fireworks, prosecutors say that Miller, Green and Fernandez "hatched" the plot to kill Walls, which they enacted on July 7.

Green and an unnamed juvenile suspect allegedly lay in wait for Walls outside the Pink Houses on the night of July 7, ambushing her on an outdoor path. Green is alleged to have fired first, according to an account in the New York Daily News, hitting an unnamed man, 30, in the arm, and Walls began to run away. 

Green allegedly chased her, according to the New York Post, and Walls unknowingly ran toward the underage suspect, who also fired on her.

That, prosecutors say, gave Green enough time to catch up with Walls and finish firing upon her.

Walls initially survived the attack and reportedly identified her shooter to police before she died on July 17; her family provided police with the driver's license and shell casing she had saved from July 4. Prosecutors say that shell casing matched one of the weapons used in her killing, linking Miller to the murder.

Wint is charged with helping Miller, Green and Fernandez evade capture after the murder.

Green and Wint were arrested on Monday. Miller was arrested on Thursday in Los Angeles on federal firearms charges related to the July 4 incident, according to the New York Daily News. Fernandez is also in federal custody on prior charges, according to prosecutors.

If convicted on the maximum charges they face, Green, Fernandez and Miller face mandatory life sentences and the possibility of the death penalty. Wint faces up to 20 years on his racketeering charges and up to 15 on the charges that he aided in Walls' murder after the fact.