Brooklyn gang member Darius Sutton took part in at least three shootings after being released without bail in May on an attempted murder charge, according to federal prosecutors.
“Darrius Sutton, 23, was initially arrested in connection with a May 16 shooting in the courtyard of an East New York building that left a man seriously injured,” the New York Post reported.
“Despite the attempted murder rap, Sutton was set free without bail the same day of his May 20 arrest. The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office said the lone witness in the case recanted,” the article read.
However, less than two months after his release, the alleged Bloods gang member reportedly joined others in three drive-by shootings over the summer.
The Post article continued:
The gunplay took place between July 13 and 14 and the attacks were just a few of the six shootings in which Sutton participated over the past year, federal prosecutors allege. Sutton was seen on surveillance camera footage in one of the attacks, on April 20, when he snuck up behind a rival gang member and shot him three times in broad daylight, prosecutors allege. The victim narrowly escaped death.
“As the video of the shooting and the photographs … make clear, it was entirely fortuitous that the defendant was unsuccessful in his attempt to murder the victim,” prosecutors wrote in a filing last week after federal agents arrested the suspect.
Sutton is being held in federal custody at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, according to the New York Daily News.
The report stated:
The feds have charged Sutton as a felon in possession of a weapon for the April 20 shooting. He faces up to 10 years in prison in the case. Besides the April shooting, Sutton is believed to have taken part in five others since August 2019, including the May attempted murder, according to federal prosecutors.
He appeared in the music video for a rap song titled “Crime Rate” by a Brooklyn rapper called BK Eaz about how their gang was “boosting the crime rate” in New York City, the feds say. The song opens with a TV reporter speaking about a surge in crime in 2020.
The suspect previously spent two years behind bars after he plead guilty to assaulting a woman and breaking her teeth in 2014, the Daily News article noted.
“The defendant’s violent spree over the last year has left at least seven individuals with gunshot wounds,” federal prosecutors said in last week’s filing.
“The defendant is extraordinarily violent by any measure and he has shown total disregard for the lives of others,” they concluded.