High-Ranking “Ygz” Gang Member Sentenced To 45 Years In Prison For Murder Of 21-Year-Old

Kareem Lanier Also Sentenced for His Role in Three Additional Murders

  Joon H. Kim, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that KAREEM LANIER, a/k/a “Reem,” a/k/a “Black,” has been sentenced to a term of 40 years in prison, which must run consecutively to a prior prison sentence of five years, for his crimes as a high-ranking member of the “Young Gunnaz” or “YGz” gang, including murdering Dykeem Etheridge on January 24, 2011, and providing assistance to other YGz gang members in connection with three other murders.  LANIER was sentenced on Friday afternoon in Manhattan federal court by United States District Judge Valerie E. Caproni, before whom he previously pleaded guilty.

According to the charging and other documents filed in the case, as well as statements made during LANIER’s guilty plea and sentencing proceedings and other court proceedings in the case:

LANIER was a high-ranking member of a set of the YGz gang known as the “Morris Avenue Gunnaz,” which was based in and around Maria Lopez Plaza on Morris Avenue in the South Bronx.  From 2005 to 2017, members and associates of the YGz enriched themselves by committing robberies and by selling drugs, such as crack cocaine, and committed acts of violence, including murder and attempted murder, against various people, including rival gang members. 

On January 24, 2011, a group of YGz members, including LANIER, assaulted Dykeem Etheridge, 21, as he exited a store on the corner of 154th Street and Courtlandt Avenue.  LANIER shot and killed Etheridge as he tried to flee the attack.  LANIER later told a fellow gang member that he killed Etheridge in order to enhance his status in the YGz.

On July 3, 2011, LANIER and other YGz members rode on bicycles to the territory of a rival gang on Park Avenue near 158th Street in the South Bronx.  Their goal was to shoot and kill a rival gang member on sight, and LANIER went along to support and encourage the other YGz members.  A member of the YGz shot at a rival gang member, who survived the shooting.  While LANIER and others were fleeing from the scene of the shooting, LANIER’s associate shot Curtis Smith, 23, a bystander, in the head.  Smith died several days later.          

On October 17, 2011, LANIER provided a firearm to a fellow YGz member, who then used the firearm in a shootout with members of a rival gang that resulted in the death of Devon Jackson, 16, in the vicinity of East 146th Street between Third and Collect Avenues in the Bronx.

On December 22, 2011, after several YGz members murdered Taisheem Ferguson, 17, near Morris Avenue and 151st Street in the Bronx, LANIER helped two of the participants in the murder flee from the scene by hailing and paying for a taxi cab so that they would escape before the police could catch them. 

LANIER, 26, of the Bronx, is the eighth defendant to be sentenced this year by Judge Caproni for participation in a YGz-related murder.

Acting U.S. Attorney Kim praised the outstanding work of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the New York City Police Department in the investigation of this case.  He also thanked the Bronx District Attorney’s Office for their support in this case.