Three dozen young members from two warring Brooklyn gangs have been indicted for unleashing a wave of broad-daylight gun violence in Brownsville — killing one and wounding 10 others, and sending children scrambling in playgrounds and housing complex courtyards.
The violent rivalry between the WOOO and CHOO gangs has raged for years, with one veteran CHOO member even going as far as telling a 14-year-old shooter to keep up the violence, according to Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.
“Nobody doin’ s—. Nobody, it’s really us, gang,” Kheyden Graham, now 14, groused to fellow gangbanger Paul Moore, 25, in a recorded phone call on June 9, 2024. “Taggin’ no opps, no nothing.”
Moore, who was locked up in Rikers Island, offered some less-than-sage advice: “You gotta start violating…. Violate the bros, bro.”
“You have a grown man telling a 14-year-old boy to violate other young men and to fuel this gang violence,” Gonzalez told reporters Wednesday, when he announced the gang takedown, dubbed “Operation Crossfire.”
The WOOO gang, which includes members of the Gorilla Stone Bloods and Bloodhound Brim Bloods, operates in Seth Low Houses, Van Dyke Houses, Langston Hughes Houses, Noble Drew Ali Plaza and Brownsville Houses.
The CHOO, meanwhile, are based in the Tilden Houses, Howard Houses, Marcus Garvey Village, Newport Gardens and Riverdale Towers.
Often, the two gangs claim territory right across the street from each other.
“So, literally, when these young men walk out of their housing development and come out of their homes and cross the street, they’re considered to be on rival territory,” Gonzalez said. “This is the work that we’re up against, trying to stop people who live literally across the street from each other from feuding with each other.”
In all, 16 WOOO members and 20 CHOO members were swept up in the indictments, their ages ranging from 16 to 27. Ten of the suspects haven’t celebrated their 18th birthday.
The indictments announced Wednesday cover the June 29, 2025, killing of Tahriq Thompson, who was shot dead just two months after he was paroled for a double-killing at a pre-West Indian Day Parade barbecue in September 2009.
According to prosecutors, WOOO member Jaden Grant, 19, and an unidentified accomplice waked to the Riverdale Towers, in CHOO territory. The accomplice fired several times near 280 Riverdale Ave., then handed the gun to Grant, who fired several more times. Thompson was hit in the left shoulder, and the bullet ripped through his lungs and aorta, fatally wounding him.
The indictments also include 35 more shooting incidents, resulting in 10 more people being wounded — including a 69-year-old man hit by a stray bullet while taking out the trash outside his home.
That caught-on-video shooting, on Aug. 1, 2023, was sparked when WOOO member Deshawn Nimmons — who pleaded guilty last month to a gun charge and awaits sentencing — was walking with his pals and spotted a CHOO rival, Jeffrey Thomas, inside a barber shop on Chester St. near Lott Ave., and opened fire.
Thomas, 20, came out and returned fire at the group after they scattered, hitting the 69-year-old bystander in the torso by mistake, prosecutors said.
Video from another shooting, on April 22, 2023, shows CHOO member Bryan Ramos, 18, and two accomplices approach a playground at the Van Dyke Houses, in WOOO territory, just before 2:45 p.m., Gonzalez said. As children climbed and played on a jungle gym, the CHOO members blasted bullets across the playground. The children scrambled for safety, and luckily, no one was hurt.
Gonzalez compared that shooting, and others in the indictments, to the stray-bullet killing that ended the life of seven-month-old Kaori Patterson-Moore two weeks ago.
“Even if they’re younger shooters, they’re just as dangerous, because in every one of these cases that I’ve shown you, they just continue to shoot in the presence of innocent bystanders,” the DA said.
Gonzalez stressed that gang takedown operations have helped drive down the number of shootings in Brooklyn to record lows, noting that 17 of the 36 people indicted were taken into custody before the takedown operation began.
As part of the investigations, police recovered almost 200 spent shell casings from shooting scenes, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.
“Their vicious campaign of retaliation and retribution, waged with absolutely no regard for human life, turned every slight into a shootout,” she said.
Gonzalez also announced that his office is bringing its “Project Restore” program to Brownsville, identifying at-risk young people and trying to direct them to therapy and other programs before they’re arrested for firing a gun.
“We want to do more than simply lock people up,” he said. “We want to prevent them from committing crimes…. We want to invest in their lives, and we want them to be productive members of the community.”