{"id":198495,"date":"2026-04-15T20:24:39","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T20:24:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/198495\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T20:24:39","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T20:24:39","slug":"36-brooklyn-gang-members-charged-in-shootings-as-rival-wooo-and-choo-crews-busted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/198495\/","title":{"rendered":"36 Brooklyn gang members charged in shootings as rival WOOO and CHOO crews busted"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three dozen young members from two warring Brooklyn gangs have been indicted<\/a> for unleashing a wave of broad-daylight gun violence in Brownsville \u2014 killing one and wounding 10 others, and sending children scrambling in playgrounds and housing complex courtyards.<\/p>\n

The violent rivalry between the WOOO and CHOO gangs<\/a> has raged for years, with one veteran CHOO member even going as far as telling a 14-year-old shooter to keep up the violence, according to Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody doin\u2019 s\u2014. Nobody, it\u2019s really us, gang,\u201d Kheyden Graham, now 14, groused to fellow gangbanger Paul Moore, 25, in a recorded phone call on June 9, 2024. \u201cTaggin\u2019 no opps, no nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moore, who was locked up in Rikers Island, offered some less-than-sage advice: \u201cYou gotta start violating\u2026. Violate the bros, bro.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have a grown man telling a 14-year-old boy to violate other young men and to fuel this gang violence,\u201d Gonzalez told reporters Wednesday, when he announced the gang takedown, dubbed \u201cOperation Crossfire.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SeizedSeized guns are displayed as Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch announce a gang takedown at the Kings County DA’s Office in Brooklyn, New York, on April 15, 2026. (Gardiner Anderson \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

The WOOO gang, which includes members of the Gorilla Stone Bloods and Bloodhound Brim Bloods, operates in Seth Low Houses, Van Dyke Houses, Langston Hughes Houses, Noble Drew Ali Plaza and Brownsville Houses.<\/p>\n

The CHOO, meanwhile, are based in the Tilden Houses, Howard Houses, Marcus Garvey Village, Newport Gardens and Riverdale Towers.<\/p>\n

Often, the two gangs claim territory right across the street from each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, literally, when these young men walk out of their housing development and come out of their homes and cross the street, they\u2019re considered to be on rival territory,\u201d Gonzalez said. \u201cThis is the work that we\u2019re up against, trying to stop people who live literally across the street from each other from feuding with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

In all, 16 WOOO members and 20 CHOO members were swept up in the indictments, their ages ranging from 16 to 27. Ten of the suspects haven\u2019t celebrated their 18th birthday.<\/p>\n

\"TariqTariq Thompson was pronounced dead after he was shot in the right arm on Riverdale Ave. near Osborn St. in Brooklyn on Sunday, June 29, 2025. (Theodore Parisienne \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

The indictments announced Wednesday cover the June 29, 2025, killing of Tahriq Thompson,<\/a> who was shot dead just two months after he was paroled for a double-killing at a pre-West Indian Day Parade barbecue in September 2009.<\/p>\n

According to prosecutors, WOOO member Jaden Grant, 19, and an unidentified accomplice waked to the Riverdale Towers, in CHOO territory. The accomplice fired several times near 280 Riverdale Ave., then handed the gun to Grant, who fired several more times. Thompson was hit in the left shoulder,<\/a> and the bullet ripped through his lungs and aorta, fatally wounding him.<\/p>\n

\"TariqTariq Thompson, 34, brother of City Council candidate Jammel Thompson, was gunned down at Riverdale Ave. and Osborn St. in Brownsville, Brooklyn, in June 2025. (Photo provided by the family)<\/p>\n

The indictments also include 35 more shooting incidents, resulting in 10 more people being wounded \u2014 including a 69-year-old man hit by a stray bullet while taking out the trash outside his home.<\/p>\n

That caught-on-video shooting, on Aug. 1, 2023, was sparked when WOOO member Deshawn Nimmons \u2014 who pleaded guilty last month to a gun charge and awaits sentencing \u2014 was walking with his pals and spotted a CHOO rival, Jeffrey Thomas, inside a barber shop on Chester St. near Lott Ave., and opened fire.<\/p>\n

Thomas, 20, came out and returned fire at the group after they scattered, hitting the 69-year-old bystander in the torso by mistake, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

\"OnOn Aug. 1, 2023, WOOO member Deshawn Nimmons was walking with his pals when he spotted a CHOO rival, Jeffrey Thomas, inside a barber shop on Chester St. near Lott Ave., and opened fire. Thomas came out and returned fire at the group after they scattered, hitting a 69-year-old bystander in the torso by mistake, prosecutors said. (Brooklyn DA’s Office)<\/p>\n

Video from another shooting, on April 22, 2023, shows CHOO member Bryan Ramos, 18, and two accomplices approach a playground at the Van Dyke Houses, in WOOO territory, just before 2:45 p.m., Gonzalez said. As children climbed and played on a jungle gym, the CHOO members blasted bullets across the playground. The children scrambled for safety, and luckily, no one was hurt.<\/p>\n

Gonzalez compared that shooting, and others in the indictments, to the stray-bullet killing that ended the life of seven-month-old Kaori Patterson-Moore two weeks ago.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cEven if they\u2019re younger shooters, they\u2019re just as dangerous, because in every one of these cases that I\u2019ve shown you, they just continue to shoot in the presence of innocent bystanders,\u201d the DA said.<\/p>\n

Gonzalez stressed that gang takedown operations have helped drive down the number of shootings in Brooklyn to record lows, noting that 17 of the 36 people indicted were taken into custody before the takedown operation began.<\/p>\n

As part of the investigations, police recovered almost 200 spent shell casings from shooting scenes, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir vicious campaign of retaliation and retribution, waged with absolutely no regard for human life, turned every slight into a shootout,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"NYPDNYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch and Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, right, announce a gang takedown at the Kings County DA’s Office in Brooklyn, New York, on Wednesday, April 15, 2026. (Gardiner Anderson \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

Gonzalez also announced that his office is bringing its \u201cProject Restore\u201d program to Brownsville, identifying at-risk young people and trying to direct them to therapy and other programs before they\u2019re arrested for firing a gun.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to do more than simply lock people up,\u201d he said. \u201cWe want to prevent them from committing crimes\u2026. We want to invest in their lives, and we want them to be productive members of the community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three dozen young members from two warring Brooklyn gangs have been indicted for unleashing a wave of broad-daylight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,262,263,266,85,267,9,24,264,12,63,261,265],"class_list":["post-198495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-city","tag-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-crime","tag-sub-county-region"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}