The leader of a Brooklyn street gang was convicted Thursday in the murder of a government witness during violent a turf war in the East New York projects, authorities said.
Maliek Miller, the 30-year-old leader of the Ninedee Gang out of the Louis H. Pink Houses, ordered and helped plan the July 2020 killing of Shatavia Walls, 33, after she took the stand against one of Miller’s underlings who shot her in 2017, according to a statement from federal prosecutors.
The feds hit Miller with more than a half-dozen charges connected to her death, including racketeering, conspiracy to commit murder in aid of racketeering, murder in aid of racketeering and weapons and drug offenses.
After a four-week trial in Brooklyn federal court, a jury declared him guilty on each count, according to a statement from the US Attorney’s Office.
He faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
“Today’s verdict is momentous because it holds Miller accountable for orchestrating a cowardly plot to kill a woman who bravely stood up to his Ninedee Gang, and it upholds the rule of law for the residents of the Pink Houses who just want to go about their lives and raise their children without the plague of violence and danger inflicted on them by ruthless criminals like the defendant,” US Attorney Breon Peace said in the statement.
“The verdict ensures that Miller will spend the rest of his life in prison, which I hope provides some measure of solace to the family of Shatavia Walls.”
Walls’ fatal shooting on the night of July 7, 2020 had been meticulously planned and carried out by the Ninedee Gang just three days after Walls confronted the gangbangers about setting off illegal fireworks in the Linden Boulevard housing complex.
During the fight, Miller called Walls a “snitch” — and also fired his gun into the air, prosecutors said.
Shortly after, Miller and other Ninedee members began plotting her demise.
The group already had it in for Walls, who in 2019 testified in a Brooklyn federal case that a member of the Loopy Gang — another housing complex crew with deep ties to the Ninedees — had shot her two years earlier.
She faced intense pressure during that time, with gangbangers posting flyers throughout the complex that said “Shatavia Been a Rat And She Still Ratting.”
Three days later after the Independence Day encounter, Ninedee members Quintin Green, 23, and gang member Joe Santana, 20, sprung their trap, court documents said.
The pair waited at the Pink Houses through the afternoon and early evening of July 7, waiting for a chance to clip the unsuspecting woman.
Walls finally walked out of a building in the complex at about 9:25 p.m. — and that’s when Green sauntered up and started shooting, the feds said.
Green was no marksman — instead of hitting his intended target, the bullet struck an innocent bystander, prosecutors said.
Green followed when Walls took off, firing the whole time.
In a desperate dash, the doomed woman unknowingly sprinted right toward Santana — who was a juvenile at the time. He also opened fire, according to prosecutors.
Eventually, Green caught up to Walls and gunned her down behind one of the Linden Boulevard buildings.
Afterward, Ninedee member Shakur Bey, 27, torched the shooters’ clothing by tossing it down an incinerator chute, the US Attorney’s Office said.
And gang member Kevin Wint, 30, rented a hotel room near John F. Kennedy Airport in Queens so the killers could hide out.
Walls lingered for 10 days before she finally died.
Green, Santana, and Bey have already pleaded guilty to charges associated with the murder and are awaiting sentencing.
Wint — who pleaded guilty in March 2023 — has already been sentenced to more than nine years in prison for his role, the feds said.
“There is no place for such egregious violence in our city, especially when used in retaliation to incite fear,” FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge James Smith said in a statement.
“May today’s conviction offer some closure to Shatavia Walls’s family and serve as a deterrent to gangs who use violent tactics in furtherance of their criminal activity.”
