FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, March 6, 2025
Reputed Gang member Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison for
Shooting Rival During the West Indian Day Parade
Arrived at Scene With Loaded Pistol Before Fight Broke Out
With Rival Gang; Convicted of First-Degree Assault
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez announced today that a 25-year-old Brooklyn man was sentenced to 10 years in prison for shooting a rival gang member during a confrontation at the Western Indian Day Parade in 2023. Trial evidence showed that the defendant came to the scene with a loaded pistol, looking for violence, and that his group confronted the rival gang upon seeing them.
District Attorney Gonzalez said, “This case demonstrates the dangers our communities face from gang members who have no regard for human life and are willing to open fire amid a crowded parade. My office is determined to keep holding those who commit shootings fully responsible, as we have in this case. This uncompromising approach is part of the reason that Brooklyn experienced the safest year in terms of gun violence in 2024, with shootings and homicides continuing to decrease this year.”
The District Attorney identified the defendant as Ricardo Brown, 25, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. He was sentenced today by Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Laura Johnson to 10 years in prison and five years’ post release supervision. The defendant was convicted last month of first-degree assault after a jury trial.
The District Attorney said that, according to the evidence, on September 4, 2023, just before 5:20 p.m., the defendant and a group of up to 10 young men left a building near Sterling Place and Utica Avenue in Crown Heights that’s known to be the headquarters of the Stain Gang. That crew, which the defendant belongs to, has an ongoing rivalry with a gang called 487.
The evidence showed that the defendant, armed with a loaded .380 caliber pistol, went to the parade with his group and confronted the victim and a group of his friends in front of 1187 Eastern Parkway, which is 487 territory. A fight broke out almost immediately after the two groups saw each other. The defendant pulled out his gun and fired two shots – one struck the victim in the back and the second hit the windshield of a passing fire truck. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the immediate vicinity of the shooting.
The victim was treated almost instantaneously by first responders who were stationed along the parade route, likely saving his life. The bullet entered his back, exited the stomach and was lodged in his hand, and he also suffered fractured ribs and a lacerated liver from the through-and-through gunshot wound, requiring surgery, intubation and hospitalization.
The defendant fled immediately after the shooting, tossed the pistol in a driveway between two daycares and ultimately returned to the Stain Gang headquarters. A man attending the parade found the gun and informed responding officers. Ballistic analysis matched the weapon to the two shell casings recovered at the scene.
Paralegal Jamal Marshall, of the District Attorney’s Orange Zone Trial Bureau, and Forensic Analyst Tina Razack, of the District Attorney’s Digital Evidence Lab, assisted in prosecuting this case.
The case was prosecuted by Senior Assistant District Attorney Matthew Barg and Assistant District Attorney Shelby Mitchell of the District Attorney’s Orange Zone Trial Bureau, under the supervision of Assistant District Attorney Michael Trabulsi, Deputy Bureau Chief, and Danielle Eaddy, Bureau Chief.
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