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Newcomer to Erie convicted in shootings between two gangs days apart

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Defendant, 21, of Memphis, Tennessee, was last convicted of shooting up a Poplar Street home and drive-by shooting of a 14-year-old boy near West 29th and Cherry Street in February 2023.

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  • Erie police have charged five suspects in connection with two gang-related shootings in Erie in February 2023
  • The target of the shooting was a 15-year-old member of a rival gang, the prosecutor’s office said
  • One of the defendants arrived in Erie from Tennessee about a year before the shooting, and he faces up to 12 years in prison for his role in both cases.

Jamaica A. Boyd had only been in Erie for about a year when he took part in two gang-related shootings two days apart in February 2023.

He helped spray fifteen to twenty bullets into a house at West Second and Poplar streets on the night of February 6, 2023.

And he provided the gun that one of his four co-defendants used when a 14-year-old boy was wounded in the neck during a drive-by shooting near West 29th and Cherry Street on Feb. 8, 2023.

Both times, police and prosecutors said, Boyd and his co-defendants missed their intended target: a 15-year-old boy with ties to a rival street gang.

Boyd, 21, had moved to Erie from Memphis to live with family. The incidents have forced him to move again.

He was sentenced to six to 12 years in prison for both shootings.

The Erie County District Attorney’s Office and the defense recommended that sentence in light of Boyd’s guilty plea, in January, to four charges: attempted murder and carrying a firearm without a permit in the Cherry Street shooting and aggravated assault and battery of a firearm into an occupied structure in the Poplar Street shooting.

Erie County Judge John J. Mead followed the recommendation when he sentenced Boyd on Friday.

Mead called the shootings “deeply disturbing” and another example of “young people preying on young people all over the city.”

Boyd said he took responsibility.

“I’m not a bad person,” he told Mead via videoconference from the Erie County jail. “I was just with the wrong people at the wrong time.”

Two rival gangs, two shootings in Erie

Boyd got involved with the wrong crowd not long after arriving in Erie. His attorney, Bruce Sandmeyer, said Boyd moved to Erie from Memphis about a year before the shooting.

The members of the mob were gang members.

Boyd and his four co-defendants were connected to the 2-5, a gang based in the area of ​​East 25th and German Streets, according to information presented by Chief Deputy Attorney Jeremy Lightner in court Friday and during previous court proceedings.

Lightner said the 15-year-old boy targeted in both shootings was affiliated with Pop Block, a gang based in the Poplar Street neighborhood.

The main suspect in the two shootings is Kremeer K. Thompson, who was 17 at the time and was charged as an adult.

Police said Thompson was armed with an assault rifle when he and Boyd shot up the Poplar Street home on Feb. 6 at about 8:45 p.m., and police said Thompson used a .357-caliber handgun belonging to Boyd to shoot the 14. year-old boy at West 29th and Cherry Street around 4:35 p.m. on Feb. 8.

The gun was fired from an SUV driving through the neighborhood just north of Erie High School. Boyd, Thompson and two other co-defendants — Anfernee K. Graves and Elijah R. Ward — were in the SUV Graves was driving, police said.

The 14-year-old was hospitalized and recovered, Lightner said. He said Thompson wanted to shoot the 15-year-old.

A group of people in the area shot back at the SUV. That gunfire led police to charge two others: Orguna L. Sanders Jr., 21, who was given probation, and a suspect who was charged as a juvenile.

In the Poplar Street case, the house sprayed with gunfire is next door to the home of the 15-year-old target, police said.

The bullets pierced the home’s windows, walls, paneling and doors, one of the residents testified during the preliminary hearing in the two shooting cases in May 2023. He said the shooting sounded like a war zone.

Two co-defendants have also pleaded guilty and been sentenced

Thompson, now 19, pleaded guilty in January to attempted murder, aggravated assault and other charges in the shooting. He pleaded guilty to intimidating a witness for contacting the 14-year-old victim in an attempt to get him to lie about what happened.

Mead followed a different recommended sentence, giving Thompson 10.5 to 30 years in prison in March.

Thompson, Boyd and two other co-defendants – Graves and Ward – were charged in both shootings. Another co-defendant was charged alone in the Poplar Street case.

That defendant is Saron D. Tate, 22 years old. He pleaded guilty in January to conspiracy to discharge a firearm into an occupied building, and Mead immediately sentenced him to 11½ to 23 months in Erie County Prison and two years of probation, according to court records. records.

Graves and Ward, both 22, testified for the prosecution during the preliminary hearing into the shootings in May 2023. They are both awaiting trial while in custody on bond.

With Boyd’s conviction, the main co-defendants in the shooting have been sentenced to prison terms.

As Lightner said in court Friday, the gunmen fired the bullets in both cases for the same reason: Boyd, the newcomer to Erie, joined Thompson and the others in “an attempt to pursue a 15-year-old boy who had upset them’. .”

Contact Ed Palattella at [email protected] or 814-881-0238. Follow him on X @ETNpalattella.

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