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Members of the Brooklyn-based rapper criminal street gang beat some victims, robbed others with guns and knives and even threatened police, the 13-count indictment alleges.
Five of the six defendants were taken into custody during a tactical takedown by city police last April. The sixth, Ivan “Live” Santos of Staten Island, surrendered to Englewood detectives weeks later.
Englewood detectives and SWAT team members used a “flash-bang” device to storm a Tenafly Road home the night of April 16 as part of several quick-strike raids and arrests.
Inside the house, detectives said, they found marijuana and packaging materials, as well as a .22-caliber sport carbine that was hidden in a bathroom.
The rifle was among a group of knockoffs designed to look like assault weapons, they said.
Other arrests followed, as well as the May 8 surrender of Santos, who posted $175,000 bail in September and was released from the Bergen County Jail.
Also named with Santos, who is charged with three robberies, are (left to right):
Emmanuel “Siete” Mosquea-DeJesus
Jaime Correa
Jay Leon
Joél “Joe” Carela
Ivan Santos
Roberto “Bugz” Tavarez (IMAGES: Courtesy ENGLEWOOD PD)
They are variously charged with muggings and holdups:
A 28-year-old Bergenfield man told police he was walking along Tenafly Road, just south of West End Avenue, just before 3 a.m. April 6 when he was beaten and robbed of more than $1,900 by several men. He’d just been paid at his laborer job and recognized his attackers from a neighborhood he frequent. He was treated for facial injuries at Englewood Medical Center.
On April 14, a 28-year-old Englewood man told police he’d been terrorized four days earlier by a group of young men he threatened him with a knife, beat him and took his iPhone — outside the Tenafly Road home.
“He told the officer he knew one of his attackers from school and the neighborhood,” Detective Capt. Timothy Torell said at the time. “He didn’t report the incident initially out of fear of retaliation.”
Around 10 p.m. on April 14, a 42-year-old jitney bus driver from North Bergen said she pulled over on eastbound Route 4 near the Englewood/Teaneck border for a fare and was robbed of her cash by two men — one with a handgun.
An hour later, a 37-year-old Englewood man told police he was walking home on Third Street when two men, one with a handgun, robbed him of the cash from his wallet.
A half-hour after that, an 18-year-old Cliffside Park man flagged down an officer and said he’d just been robbed of his iPhone and cash by several men as he delivered pizza to a Brookway Avenue address, barely a half-mile from the Third Street holdup.
Working informants, interviewing victims and talking with others in the community, Englewood detectives narrowed down the suspects to a group known to sell pot in the Third Ward, Torell said.
The lead investigators, Detective Sgt. Christopher Kedersha and Detective Carlos Marte, obtained warrants for Correa and Carela in connection with the first robbery, the captain said.
The case then began to fall into place.
Another defendant identified as a major player is Leon, who was arrested during the Tenafly Road raid and charged with both the April 6 and April 10 holdups.
Also charged in both robberies is 21-year-old Emmanuel “Siete” Mosquea-DeJesus of Brooklyn.
Detectives on Tuesday were on their way to the Bergen County Jail to charge Correa, Leon and Mosquea-DeJesus with the pizza deliveryman robbery when they ran into Leon, who’d just been released after posting bail in the Tenafly Road case, Torell said.
“Leon resisted arrest and tried to escape,” the captain told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. “He was brought under control with the assistance of other sheriff’s officers who were in the area at the time.”
The indictment charges Leon with
“purposely preventing or attempting to prevent” hisarrest ” by “using or threatening to use physical force or violence” against Kerdersha and Marte.
It also includes charges against Correa, Carela and Leon for selling marijuana and Oxycodone.
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