Feds charge NC men with killing 9-year-old boy, racketeering to aid Durham Crips gang

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Feds charge NC men with killing 9-year-old boy, racketeering to aid Durham Crips gang

Virginia Bridges

Two men charged with killing 9-year-old Z’Yon Person in the summer of 2019 now face federal racketeering charges, accused of committing violent crimes to aid their Durham gang operation.

An Oct. 27 indictment sealed until Friday states rapper Antonio “Lil Tony” Davenport and Dival “Paco” Nygee Magwood and the Eight Trey Gangster Crips sold drugs, committed fraud, and engaged in other illegal activity and violent crimes to enrich the gang’s members.

The Eight Trey Gangster Crips controlled illegal activity in northern and other sections of Durham by keeping rival gang members and the public in fear through intimidation, assaults and other violent crimes, the indictment states.

The indictment, which appears to move the case from Durham County to federal court, also charges the men with discharging a firearm in the commission of a crime and discharging a firearm that killed Z’Yon to aid in racketeering. The boy was fatally shot in the head from a passing car as he rode with a group of children in his aunt’s SUV to get snow cones.

The indictment stems from a federal-state collaboration, U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina Matt Martin said in a statement

“In 2019, after the murder of a 9-year-old boy, I told the people of Durham that federal prosecutors and investigators would work diligently with our state and local law enforcement partners to combat violent crime in their community,” Martin said.

Two of the charges carry a life sentence and are death penalty eligible. The third carries maximums of 10 years or life depending on past convictions.

In an interview from the Durham County jail last month, Davenport, 25, said he didn’t have anything to do with the shooting that killed Z’Yon.

He contends he is being abused by the system. The evidence against him is false and based on rumors and criminal informants who are trying to save themselves, he said.

A gang dispute outlined in court documents is inaccurate, he added. A prosecutor claims the shooting followed Davenport being attacked by a rival gang at a Durham mall. But he said he wasn’t assaulted by members of that gang.

“The whole thing is false,” he said. “It was never a gang dispute.”

Local charges dropped

Davenport was the first person charged with murdering Z’Yon, two months after the Aug. 19, 2019, shooting. He also faced five counts of attempted murder, one count of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and other charges.

He has been held in jail without bail since.

Magwood, 23, and Derrick Lamont Dixon, 28, were charged with murder and other crimes about a month later. Both remain in federal custody.

The charges in Durham County Superior Court against Magwood and Dixon were dropped earlier this month due to them being charged in federal court, according to Durham County court documents.

There is no public record of Dixon facing charges related to Z’Yon’s killing in federal court.

The Durham County District Attorney’s office is in regular contact with the U.S. Attorney’s Office about the case, wrote Durham County DA spokesperson Sarah Willets in an email.

“The decisions made regarding these charges have been made in consultation with them, and we continue to evaluate the case together,” she wrote.

A spokesperson for Martin’s office declined to comment on the specifics of the charges.

Davenport’s attorney, who also declined to comment, has said in court that most of the evidence relies on statements from Dixon.

The Eight Trey Gangster Crips, based in the Braggtown area of northern Durham, were responsible for a significant portion of the violent crime and drug sales in the Bull City, according to federal court documents. A regional violent gang task force started investigating them in 2017.

In early 2019, the task force began investigating a feud between the gang and another known as O-Block or The Food Lions Projects, according to court documents

Aug. 18, 2019

At 8:38 p.m. on Aug. 18, 2019, Danyell Ragland called 911 to report someone in a burgundy car had fired shots at her SUV filled with six children as she turned onto North Duke Street from Leon Street. They were on the way to get snow cones, she later said.

Her son, 8, was shot in the arm and recovered, but her nephew Z’Yon, a first-grader at Penny Road Elementary in Cary, was shot in the head and later died.

Davenport mistook Ragland’s SUV for the car of someone else involved in the ongoing dispute between the Eight Trey Gangsters and the O-Block gang, Assistant District Attorney Kendra Montgomery-Blinn said in court in November.

Court documents build a case based on Davenport’s movements, mapped out by an ankle monitor he had been ordered to wear six days before the shooting while he faced domestic violence, gun and drug charges in Durham and Wake counties.

83 Babies record deal

Davenport was a member of the three-person rap group 83 Babies, which has 114,000 followers on Instagram. The number 83 is a symbol of the Eight Trey Gangster Crips, according to court documents.

In the months before the shooting, the 83 Babies had signed a deal with Rich Forever Records, a division of Atlantic Records, according to court records, and was traveling across the United States to play shows.

In April 2020, the group announced on its Facebook page that Davenport was no longer a member.

Davenport said that was just for the public.

“You can’t take me out of something that I started,” he said.

Incident at Southpoint mall

On Aug. 14. 2019, Davenport was assaulted by members of O-Block and 8AM, a music group that includes former Eight Trey Gangster Crips members who now align with O-Block, at The Streets at Southpoint, an October 2019 Durham County search warrant states.

Davenport was seen on surveillance footage arriving at the mall in a burgundy Honda Accord and was assaulted, the warrant states. Videos of the assault were also shared on social media.

Davenport said he doesn’t know who attacked him but they weren’t in O-Block.

“They know for sure that these are not O-Block members and they still let the DA and this other homicide detective push this theory,” Davenport said.

As the 83 Babies’ music took off, it raised their profile and made them a target for others in the area, he said.

“It is confidential informants and stuff like that, (they) make up lies to get out of trouble,” he said. “They threw us all under the bus.”

According to a search warrant, Davenport communicated with someone from O-Block on Instagram around 12:30 p.m. Aug. 17, 2019, the day before the shooting, in a conversation that touched on the mall incident and an O-Block member shooting Magwood in the leg.

Around 3 p.m. that day, Davenport, his girlfriend and a baby entered Mace Sports in Mebane and bought two kinds of ammunition.

Davenport said his girlfriend wanted to get ammunition for her. Court documents indicate the ammunition purchased matched the type of spent ammunition found at the scene where Zyon was fatally shot.

The day of the shooting, Davenport picked up Magwood around 4:45 p.m. and was near Leon and Duke streets when Ragland called 911, the search warrant states. Davenport says he was in the area but was not involved in the shooting.

On Sept. 27, 2019, Davenport was arrested for violation of pretrial release to electronic monitoring.

While he was in jail, Durham County sheriff’s deputies pulled Davenport’s girlfriend over and seized a handgun, which was matched by a ballistic examination to Zyon’s shooting, the search warrant states.

In addition, a confidential informant told police that Davenport had his burgundy Honda Accord painted black after police said the shots that killed Z’Yon came from that make and color of car.

Davenport says there is no evidence to support that statement.

“Where is the evidence? Where is the car?” he said.

Joined a gang

Davenport said he joined the Eight Trey Gangters about six years while he was incarcerated, but he recently dropped out.

“It didn’t do nothing for me but make my problems even worse,” he said. “It ain’t what people think it is.”

When people think of gangs, he said, they think of shootings and members fighting.

“It is really no organized thing,” he said. “It is nothing. There is no love, loyalty, nothing.”

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