Kevin Deutsch and Sasha Gonzales
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A member of one of the Bronx’s most powerful street gangs has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, closing out a violent era that saw his crew and two others terrorize a public housing complex, authorities said.
Michael White, leader of both the “Young Gunnaz” and a related gang known as “MBG,” was convicted this month of racketeering conspiracy, attempted murder, and multiple gun crimes stemming from seven separate shootings in and around NYCHA’s Mill Brook Houses, authorities said.
The once-feared gang leader, now 30, personally shot rival gangsters in front of a public school, at a community center, and inside a subway station, according to prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan.
Authorities said the shootings were part of a reign of terror inflicted on complex residents from about 2010 through October 2017, when White was, at various times, a member and leader of the Young Gunnaz set based in the Mill Brook Houses.
White was also a member of MBG, or “Money Bitches Guns,” a gang based in the same housing complex, prosecutors said.
As part of his dual-gang membership, White shot and injured at least seven people, authorities said.
The first shooting happened Jan. 25, 2010, when White wounded a 16-year-old gang rival on a street corner in the Mill Brook Houses, authorities said.
Six days later, he shot and wounded an 18-year-old rival at a baby shower and, later that night, wounded another gangland rival near a housing complex building, authorities said.
On February 12 that same year, White shot and wounded an 18-year-old gang rival outside a public school, authorities said.
More than a year later, on October 28, 2012, White shot and injured three people in the Cypress Avenue Subway Station during another gang-related attack, prosecutors said.
The case against White was part of a broader effort by the feds to decimate the Young Gunnaz and MBG – which some locals also knew as the “Millbrook Gangstas” – along with a third gang known as “Killbrook,” prosecutors said.
In October 2017, prosecutors announces charges against 33 people, including White, for their alleged involvement in gang violence and related rackets centered around the complex—and involving all three gangs.
Among the accused gang member’s alleged crimes: crack, weed, and heroin distribution, along with bank fraud, numerous non fatal-shootings, and at least one murder.
Bolivia Beck, 21, was shot and killed in broad daylight in 2011 at the Mill Brook Houses, part of a years-long conflict between Killbrook and the other two gangs, authorities said.
Killbrook members mistakenly shot Beck, mother of a little girl, while aiming for her boyfriend, an MBG member, federal prosecutors said after her killing.