COLUMBUS – Authorities Thursday announced that the last of 19 members of a Crips-affiliated Columbus gang pleaded guilty in federal court to his role in a seven-year reign of violence that included multiple murders and other crimes in Columbus and other locations.
Shawn “Mook” Nelms was among the defendants convicted in a racketeering conspiracy, first charged in 2018, that included five murders, at least 26 attempted murders, and other violent and drug-trafficking crimes, according to the office of Vipal Patel, acting U.S Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio.
Nelms was scheduled to stand trial beginning next week and pleaded guilty at a pretrial conference Wednesday. Nelms could be sentenced to up to 40 years in prison.
The 28-year-old Nelms was a member of the T&A Crips and admitted in court to participating in the 2013 murder of William Moore (right).
According to authorities, Nelms and others spotted Moore, a member of the rival Poindexter Thug Life Bloods gang, walking on Mount Vernon Avenue and agreed to kill him.
Nelms also shot another man in the chest in 2011, though the victim survived, and during a robbery that same year, Nelms fired several rounds into a home, striking a young girl who also survived, Patel said.
Nelms and 18 others were charged in 2018 for their actions as part of the gang called the T&A Crips, taking its name from Trevitt and Atcheson streets in the King-Lincoln neighborhood on the East Side where most of its members lived, Patel said.
Authorities cited at least 26 separate incidents from June 2010 until March 2017 when T&A gang members attempted to murder more individuals by shooting at them and threatened witnesses with violence to deter them from providing information to law enforcement and to enforce a “no snitching” code, Patel said.
The gang members also distributed cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin, oxycodone and marijuana, using the proceeds to buy guns to use in gang wars in Columbus.
They also traveled to Portsmouth, Chillicothe, Huntington, W. Va., and elsewhere to buy and sell drugs and guns, Patel said.