Lifelong Athens resident Randy Junior Leverette joined the street gang Piru in January 2018 and left the gang that April only to end up in jail three months later when he admittedly shot and killed a Piru gang member.
Leverette, who testified the shooting was self defense, was charged with murder.
A Clarke County Superior Court jury of nine women and three men convicted Leverette on Oct. 15 of aggravated assault, but acquitted him of the murder charge and violating the state’s gang law.
Superior Court Judge Lawton Stephens has not yet scheduled a sentencing date for the 29-year-old father of three, who prior to the trial had bonded out of jail and moved to Florida with his wife.
Leverette was tried for the slaying 24-year-old David “Big Koop” Cooper, who was shot eight times the night of July 17, 2018, in the Perry’s Convenience Store parking lot off Cedar Shoals Drive.
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The weeklong murder trial delved into numerous aspects of gang life in Athens. Leverette was a short-term member of Piru and trial testimony showed he was lured to the gas station, where he was unexpectedly confronted by two gang members.
Athens-Clarke police Det. Ricky Howard, who has worked in the department’s gang unit for more than three years, testified there are an estimated 3,700 members of various gangs operating in Athens. Statewide, he said there are nearly 71,000 gang members.
Among the crimes often attributed to gangs are violent acts such as armed robberies and drive-by shootings, along with burglaries, illegal gun sales and drug offenses, according to Howard.
Piru, for example, started in the late 1960s in Californiaand later merged with the Bloods gang, according to testimony.
“There is strength in numbers,” Howard said, adding that people often join gangs for a sense of belonging to a group, a sense of power, a search for respect and sometimes for financial reasons.
The department’s gang unit keeps confidential information on those in Athens it has identified as members of gangs. Some of this information is shared with other law enforcement officers during meetings of the Georgia Gangs Investigations Association, oftentimes only on a “need to know” basis, according to Howard.
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Gang investigators often recognize members through their clothing, symbols, hand signs, their posts on social media and books such as the Piru Book of Knowledge.
The Piru gang, estimated at about 100-plus members in the Athens area, use the colors maroon or red like their close associates, the Bloods. Pirus often wear sports apparel designed for the Chicago Bulls, Philadelphia Flyers and Philadelphia Phillies.
Gangs like Piru also have rivals, such as the Gangster Disciples, sometimes called the GD gang, Howard said.
Police also interview gang members to gather intelligence on their groups' inner workings.
During the trial, prosecutors John Regan of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, and Kyle Thompsonof the Western Circuit District Attorney’s Office, presented jail-house videos of Leverette shown talking in a brash manner to women. Police had also pulled numerous photos off the defendant’s social media accounts.
The jury also viewed body-cam videos taken by the first officers to arrive at the shooting, including Athens-Clarke police Lt. Shaun Barnettand officers Calvin Gordon and Marcus McQuien. Before Cooper died, he could be heard on the videos identifying his assailant as Leverette and saying the shooting was “gang related.”
Defense lawyers Nefertara Clark and LaToya Hutchinson of Elberton placed Rolling 20 gang member Traquavious Hillsman on the witness stand to testify that Leverette was released from the gang after a beating by other gang members.
Leverette also testified that to be released from the gang, he had to endure a beating.
“I couldn’t be set free, so I had to go through the beat out,” he said.
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Hillsman, a 25-year-old whose gang is also linked to the Bloods, testified Leverette began carrying a gun after his release from the gang because he was being bullied.
Faced with explaining all the photos that police retrieved off his social media accounts, Leverettewent through each of the photos, the bulk of which he said were posted before he ever joined a gang.
In those photos, Leverette said the hand symbols he used were a three-fingers sign representing the eastside of Athens, where he grew up. Police had mistakenly interpreted them as gang signs, according to the defendant.
Residents of the westside also have their own hand sign, Leverette said.
One photo he described as “just trying to sell records,” another as “it’s all about fashion — it’s not about a gang” and another as “just a weird picture.”
Former Athens resident William “Hunxho” Worley, 22, now living in South Carolina, testified he joined fellow gang member Cooper that fatal night to confront Leverette with an issue about the Gangster Disciples.
Worley, who was convicted on the gang statue during a trial in 2019, testified that he and Cooper had developed an animosity toward Leverette when he left the gang.
Testimony showed that when Cooper, a large man of more than 300 pounds, approached Leverette, that the defendant began firing his gun. Leverette then fled the scene on foot, but was captured by Athens-Clarke police later that evening.
Leverette remained in the Athens-Clarke County Jail on Tuesday without bond.
