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Friday, September 13, 2013

A Stray Bullet in Brooklyn: A Cripts Gang Member Shoots a Toddler to Death

     Anthony Hennis, a member of the notorious Cripts street gang with 25 arrests for drug and gun possession as well as car theft and assault, lived in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York. The Brownsville neighborhood, with a high concentration of public housing and violent crime, is one of the most dangerous places in America.

     At seven in the evening of Sunday, September 1, 2013, Anthony had picked up his 16-month-old son Antiq from the boy's mother's apartment. The father told Cherise Miller that he and the toddler would be visiting his grandmother that evening.

     As Anthony Hennis pushed his son's stroller across the street about a block from the mother's place of residence, the 21-year-old father was approached by two men. One of these men pulled out a handgun and fired four shots at Anthony. Three bullets missed their target. The fourth slug struck Antiq in the head. The shooter, as he fled from the scene on foot, yelled, "I shot the motherf--er!" (The assailant apparently didn't realize he'd missed Anthony and hit the boy.)

     An hour after the stray bullet entered the left side of Antiq's head, he died at a nearby hospital. He became the 16th murder victim this year in New York City who was under the age of sixteen.

     It didn't take New York City detectives very long to identify the child killer as a 23-year-old Cripts gangster named De Quan Breland. Breland had been accompanied by 19-year-old De Quan Wright, another member of the gang. Investigators traced the two fugitives to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania where Breland was visiting his girlfriend who happened to be Wright's sister.

     De Quan Breland, on parole from a 2011 armed robbery conviction in upstate New York, had an extensive criminal record that included robbery, assault, drug dealing, and weapons possession. (Why was this man out on parole?)

     On Friday, September 6, police officers arrested Breland and Wright at an apartment in Wilkes-Barre rented by De Quan Wright's cousin. When Breland learned he had shot and killed a boy in a stroller instead of the fellow gangster with whom he had a beef, he reportedly broke down and cried.

     Two days following their arrests in Pennsylvania, Breland and Wright were arraigned in New York City. After pleading not guilty to the homicide charges, the judge denied the prisoners bail.   

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