On an April afternoon in 2017, Roanoke police officer Kimber Hughes was driving through the Lansdowne Park public housing complex when something caught her eye.
A man, known by authorities as a suspected member of a street gang, was standing outside, surrounded by a group of teenage boys.
Hughes approached the gathering. The crowd quickly dispersed. Before leaving, the man crumpled up a piece of paper that he had been holding and tossed it into the bushes.
The police officer retrieved the two-page, handwritten document, which, according to federal prosecutors, was a primer of sorts for how to become a member of the Rollin’ 30s Crips gang.
Labeled “Rol3 Call,” the paper outlined the rules — which called for a “beat in” initiation of new members and the assaults and possible deaths of those who strayed — for a gang that allegedly was led by Sean “Denk” Guerrant.
Guerrant, 30, is scheduled to go on trial starting Tuesday in U.S. District Court on charges of running an organized criminal enterprise that was responsible for drug dealing, robberies, assaults and the murders of two young men in Northwest Roanoke.
If convicted, he faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
Although loosely organized groups calling themselves gangs have been in Roanoke for years, the Rollin’ 30s Crips has more formal ties to a national street gang originally formed in Los Angeles.
Since a “set” of the larger gang was established here several years ago, operating out of the Lansdowne neighborhood, violent crime rates have escalated.
A citywide analysis of shootings last year by the Roanoke Police Department found that 78% of the victims or suspects through early November had either confirmed of suspected links to a gang.
Many were young men in northwest Roanoke. They were the kind of people, federal authorities allege, most vulnerable to gang life — sometimes being approached by flashy figures on inner-city streets or high school hallways and enlisted before they had a chance to pursue better lives.
The birth of a gang
About four years ago, Roanoke police began to hear about the Rollin’ 30s Crips, which at the time consisted of just a handful of members.
One of them was Guerrant, who authorities say developed an affiliation with the national gang while in prison. In 2007, when he was 16 years old, Guerrant was convicted along with four other teens of stomping a man to death over a $5 debt.
He was released after serving a nine-year sentence and returned to Roanoke.
“As Guerrant and other gang members recruited additional members into the gang, the gang quickly grew in size,” according to an agreed statement of facts presented in 2018 when one of its members pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Roanoke.
Court papers describe an organized network that reported to gang leaders in larger cities, charged dues of $20 a week, had a written code of conduct, promoted itself on social media and infiltrated schools in search of new followers.
Members dressed in blue — or sometimes brown to represent the Dirt Gang, which they were also known as — and identified themselves with hand signs that included using one hand to form a “C” for Crips.
Authorities say the gang ran a drug-dealing business out of a “trap house” at Lansdowne to finance its operation. That in turn spawned numerous assaults, robberies and shootings.
“Acts of violence also serve as a way for individual members to maintain or advance their position within the gang,” court papers state.
A member of another gang said the Rollin’ 30s Crips was much more likely to turn to gunfire whenever there was trouble — which there often was.
“They run around just doing stuff for nothing, you know,” a witness identified only as D.H. testified to a grand jury. “Fighting and causing trouble for nothing…young dudes at this time of day, everybody runs to the guns you know.”
The severity of the problem became clear on June 14, 2017, when the bullet-ridden body of 17-year-old Nickalas Lee was found on the grounds of an apartment complex on Tuckawana Circle Northwest. Just two weeks earlier, Lee had graduated from Patrick Henry High School.
“A growing threat”
The gang turmoil that led to Lee’s death, as told by court documents and earlier testimony, took a twisted path.
Both Lee and a second member, identified only as D.F. by prosecutors, had joined the Rollin’ 30s Crips while still in high school, only to run into trouble for later associating with a rival Bloods gang.
Authorities say that when word of that reached Guerrant, he ordered D.F. to kill Lee as punishment for the 17-year-old’s disloyalty, which would then restore D.F.’s good standing.
D.F. refused, “an act which itself could be considered a serious gang violation,” according to court documents.
At about the same time, Lee was making overtures to rejoin the gang. So Guerrant allegedly issued a new set of orders, this time to Lee: Kill D.F. for his refusal to kill him, at which point he would again be a bona fide member of the Rollin’ 30s Crips.
On the evening of June 14, Lee and D.F. were driven by other gang members in a rental car to an apartment under the guise of meeting some girls at a party. On the way, Lee managed to warn D.F. of the plan.
D.F. fled when the car stopped. With their anger redirected at Lee, several gang members chased him behind an apartment building and shot him multiple times in the back after he had fallen to the ground.
The following month, D.F. was wounded by gunfire.
By one account from witnesses, it was a failed assassination attempt by members of the Rollin’ 30s Crips. By another, the shooting was the work of the Bloods, who were apparently still close to Lee and angry over this death.
“The larger point,” a search warrant filed in March 2018 stated, “is that gang violence in certain neighborhoods in Roanoke is a growing threat.”
In October of that year, four men were charged in what then-U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullen called a “coordinated and sustained assault on violent gangs in Roanoke.”
Three of the defendants — Demonte “Murda” Mack, 32, Trayvone “30” Kasey, 22, and Chauncey “Cee” Levesy, 27 — have since pleaded guilty to their involvement in Lee’s death and other crimes that would follow.
A second murder
On June 25, 2017, two weeks after Lee’s death, Guerrant was spotted with a gun in the parking lot of a sports bar on Bridge Street Southwest.
He fled when police arrived, crashing his car into a yard on nearby Patterson Avenue. He has been in jail ever since.
Later that year, Guerrant was sentenced to seven years in prison on charges of eluding police and having a gun as a convicted felon. He got another 20 years for violating the conditions of his earlier release on the second-degree murder case.
Following Guerrant’s incarceration, he continued to run to Rollin’ 30s Crips from behind bars, prosecutors allege in court papers.
By early 2018, tension on the outside had developed between Trayvone Kasey, who felt the gang was getting weak, and Demonte Mack, who was beginning to fear that Kasey would incriminate him in the earlier murder of Lee, which remained an unsolved case.
“These two tensions came to a head in February 2019,” prosecutors would write in court papers, when Kasey and Mack met a third man at Lansdowne for a marijuana transaction.
Markel Trevon Girty, a 23-year-old who had no involvement with the gang, was shot in the chest at close range by Kasey. Kasey and Mack, who was present, took the marijuana and left, according to evidence presented at a hearing last year when Kasey pleaded guilty to the murder.
According to court documents, Mack told his fellow gang member that he had trained him well.
“This murder cemented Kasey’s loyalty in Mack’s eyes,” assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Baudinet would later write in an associated case. “There was also an element of mutually-assured destruction at work here too, since Kasey had watched Mack murder [Lee], and now Mack had watched Kasey shoot and kill [Girty].”
Now that Mack and Kasey have pleaded guilty, their only hope for getting less than a mandatory life sentence rests with their cooperation with prosecutors. Both have agreed to testify against the last remaining defendant, the gang leader from whom they took once took orders.
A racketeering conspiracy
Sean Guerrant’s nickname is “Denk,” an apparent reference to the Denker Avenue Recreation Center in Los Angeles, where the Rollin 30s Crips got its start.
He has a large gang tattoo on his stomach that he has displayed on Facebook, federal authorities say, and has made social media comments that indicate he was the gang’s undisputed leader.
But he is not charged with being at the scene of either Lee’s or Girty’s killing. The second murder, in fact, happened when Guerrant was in jail.
That doesn’t matter, federal authorities say, under laws that hold Guerrant responsible for being involved in a racketeering conspiracy that included murder.
Defense attorneys Chris Kowalczuk and Patrick Kenney have challenged some of the government’s efforts to link their client to the gang’s activities. For example, they have argued that the piece of paper found at Lansdowne described as a gang “manual” has no known authorship, and should be excluded as hearsay.
Judge Michael Urbanski has allowed it, assuming a proper foundation is laid at trial.
A clear theme to the defense has yet to emerge from court records. Kowalczuk declined to comment on the case last week.
When Guerrant was convicted of murder as a 16-year-old in state court, he was described as an impressionable youth with emotional problems and limited intelligence.
He had little supervision growing up; his mother was in prison during much of his childhood.
At the time, defense attorney Neil Horn asked that his client receive help, arguing that sending him to prison — where Guerrant was reportedly introduced to gang life — would do no good.
If Guerrant is sent to “one of these gladiator academies,” Horn said, “he’s going to come out worse.”
Looking for solutions
Evidence of just how entrenched gangs have become in Roanoke’s criminal element remains elusive, as suspected members are often to reluctant to cooperate with law enforcement.
At a number of shootings this year, police never received an emergency call to 911. Victims made it to the hospital on their own, or with the help of witnesses who were at the scene. When police arrived, they refused to talk.
“They have a vow of silence,” said Nicole Ross, who is head of Youth Enrichment Services of Southwest Virginia and serves on the city’s gun violence prevention commission.
“They know what they can and cannot say,” she said. “They are very organized.”
But efforts are being made to pierce the veil of secrecy.
“We will continue to partner with local, state, and federal law enforcement partners to ensure the cases we bring serve to make our communities safer,” U.S. Attorney Chris Kavanaugh said last week in a statement released after Mack pleaded guilty.
The prosecution was part of Project Safe Neighborhoods, a U.S. Justice Department program that brings together federal, state and local resources.
While the prosecution arm is an important weapon in the fight against gangs, more is being done on other fronts, according to Joe Cobb, a member of the Roanoke City Council who heads the city’s gun violence task force.
An assessment is currently underway measure the gang problem and seek solutions.
A private firm has been contracted to conduct interviews with community members. Surveys will also be taken of local leaders, youth service providers, public school students and others. All responses will remain confidential.
Cobb hopes the community assessment will help determine whether the gang problem is from national organizations, homegrown groups, or some combination of the two.
Some of the young people involved have said “they don’t have a particular connection with a gang, but they say they are representing their neighborhoods,” he said. Many of those neighborhoods are in areas that have struggled for years.
“The impact on Northwest Roanoke has just been staggering,” Cobb said.
Long-standing societal woes that include poverty, broken families, lack of health care and poor educational offerings make the lure of joining a gang even stronger for young people who live in those communities.
“The thing we hear over and over again is that we have a lack of structural opportunities, whether it’s completing education, being trained though some kind of workforce training, making it into a job that’s meaningful, just a sense of belonging,” Cobb said.
Too many young men who get involved with crime have said they don’t expect to live long.
“That’s the saddest part of violence to me,” Cobb said. “It takes away the hope of a full life.”