Gang Associate Sentenced for Disclosing Private Hospital Information of Victims and Witnesses in Gang-Related Shooting

A Detroit man was sentenced to four years in prison yesterday for witness tampering for disclosing personal identification information of shooting victims and their family members to a leader of a street gang. The case was the result of work by the Detroit One partnership of local, state and federal law enforcement.

The announcement was made by Acting Assistant Attorney General David Bitkower of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Barbara L. McQuade of the Eastern District of Michigan, Special Agent in Charge Robin Shoemaker of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Special Agent in Charge David P. Gelios of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Chief James Craig of the Detroit Police Department.

Jamerio Clark, 28, of Detroit, pleaded guilty on September 27, 2016, to tampering with a witness, victim or informant before U.S. District Judge David M. Lawson in Detroit. He is the eighth person to be sentenced in this case, part of the Detroit One partnership of local, state and federal law enforcement.

According to admissions made by the Vice Lord gang members who have pleaded guilty in this case, the Vice Lords is a national gang engaged in a variety of crimes, and Vice Lords’ leaders are located in both Chicago and Detroit. As admitted in the plea agreements, members of the Vice Lords, including Antonio Clark, were searching for two brothers who had attempted to leave the gang as part of a plan to “violate” the brothers for their perceived infractions against the gang. to admissions, on May 7, 2015, they and others met at a Vice Lord member’s house to discuss their plan and collect firearms, including an AK-47 assault rifle, and then traveled in multiple cars to the intended victims’ house. After a brief confrontation with the brothers’ family members, Antonio Clark opened fire with an AK-47, firing at the family more than two dozen times and hitting the brothers, their mother and 15-year-old sister. All of the victims survived the shooting.

Jamerio Clark admitted that from May 8, 2015, through at least January 2016, he was employed at a medical facility where he had access to a private database that contained personally identifiable health information for anyone who had been treated at a Detroit Medical Center facility. At his brother’s request and while employed at the medical facility, Jamerio Clark accessed this database on at least 15 occasions to search for three Vice Lords shooting victims. According to the plea agreement, Jamerio Clark then provided to Antonio Clark information, including dates of birth, phone numbers, addresses and information pertaining to relatives of these individuals. Jamerio Clark admitted that he knew his brother wanted this information to locate these individuals and prevent them from cooperating in the investigation and prosecution of the shooting.

Seven gang members have already been sentenced in this case and received the following terms of imprisonment:

Antonio Clark, 27, of Detroit – 20 years

Aramis Wilson, 26, of Detroit – 12 years, 6 months

Tyrone Price, 27, of Detroit – 11 years, 8 months

Dion Robinson, 38, of Detroit – 10 years, 1 month

Jonathan Kinchen, 24, of Detroit – 10 years

Kojuan Lee, 20, of Detroit – 8 years, 1 month

Kirshean Nelson, 20, of Detroit – 3 years

“The Detroit One partners are working to dismantle violent street gangs that commit gun violence because of the harm it causes to our residents and our neighborhoods,” McQuade said. “Our community will not tolerate gun violence as a method to resolve disputes.”

The arrests and convictions in this case are, in part, the result of the Detroit One Initiative, a collaborative effort between law enforcement and the community to reduce homicide and other violent crime in Detroit. Through the lead efforts of the Comprehensive Violence Reduction Partnership Task Force, which consists of representatives of the ATF, Detroit Police Department, Michigan State Police, Michigan Department of Corrections and the FBI, law enforcement authorities linked various acts of violence in Detroit to the Vice Lords street gang, and identified the leaders and key members of the gang.

Another defendant, Burney Everett, 27, of Detroit, is scheduled to be sentenced on February 8, 2017. The sentencing date for the final defendant, Kenneth Smith, has yet been set.

This case is being investigated by the ATF, FBI, and Detroit Police Department. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Christopher Graveline and Mark Bilkovic of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan, and Trial Attorney Joseph Wheatley of the Criminal Division’s Organized Crime and Gang Section.