AG’s latest gang target is motorcycle club police tie to deadly Clayton shooting
Since its inception just over three years ago, Georgia’s top gang prosecution unit has secured more than 120 convictions. But the most recent takedown was the first of its kind for the specialized group.
The target: An outlaw motorcycle club with alleged ties to violence in metro Atlanta.
The state’s Office of the Attorney General recently won a major victory against high-ranking leaders of Outcast Motorcycle Club’s southeast Georgia chapter. Police say Outcast members are also behind a Forest Park shooting earlier this year that left two people dead at a large biker gathering and prompted an expanding criminal probe in which five people have now been indicted in Clayton County.
The Bryan County case was the first time the state agency’s gang prosecution unit — launched in July 2022 — took on what it has deemed a motorcycle gang. The vast investigation wound down this month with the conviction of 15 Outcast members, including the club chapter’s president, vice president, secretary and “road captain.”
The case, which stemmed from a 2022 shootout in Richmond Hill, a city near Savannah, shares some similarities with the April shooting in Forest Park. While police haven’t disclosed many details in the more recent case, officials said both incidents sprang from violent confrontations between rival motorcycle clubs that put the public in danger.
“The backstory of that conflict (in Richmond Hill) is really just essentially the age-old tale of feeling disrespected,” Cara Convery, head of the attorney general’s gang prosecution unit, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It is crazy that such serious violence is happening over such a simple concept (as) respect and disrespect ... (but) it’s really the foundation to a lot of unnecessary violence.”
The Outcast Motorcycle Club has a long history in Georgia dating back several decades. A few years after its 1967 inception in Detroit, the club’s second chapter was founded in Atlanta. Now, the club is one of the state’s reigning outlaw motorcycle groups with additional chapters in Augusta, Hawkinsville and Valdosta, according to the AG’s office.
But that prominence comes at no small price, gang experts say, and keeping a top position requires territorial disputes be met with violence. That’s exactly what prosecutors said happened in Richmond Hill, and it’s what investigators allege in Forest Park.
In the Richmond Hill case, Outcast members were warding off members of Chosen Few, a rival California-based outlaw motorcycle club that was trying to set up shop in southeast Georgia. Outcast had already laid claim to the territory and said it would “respond accordingly” to any outside club’s effort to start a chapter there, Convery said.
“(The) group actually put out a ‘green light,’ which is an OK to essentially attack on sight any of these Chosen Few guys,” she said.
That mandate culminated in the June 2022 shootout at a hotel and Mexican restaurant that left six Chosen Few members injured.
“How public a setting was, whether or not other citizens were out there eating, sleeping, trying to live life — that didn’t matter to them,“ Convery said. ”They were just trying to respond, and do so in a way that sent a message that they were essentially in charge there.”
Several bystanders were present when the gunfire erupted but none were shot, Richmond Hill police confirmed.
As investigators untangled the case, they discovered evidence of a “conspiracy to violently assault members of the rival motorcycle club and to forcibly rob them of their motorcycle vests,” the AG’s office said in a recent statement. Law enforcement also seized more than 100 weapons.
One by one, 15 of 16 indicted Outcast members have pleaded guilty since last year. The last is awaiting a ruling on his competency to stand trial, the AG’s office said.
All 15 were convicted of conspiracy to commit aggravated assault and robbery by intimidation, as well as a violation of the Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act. Most were sentenced to 20 years, with the majority of that time to be spent on strict probation. The chapter’s president received the stiffest punishment — a 25-year sentence, including seven in prison.
With the club’s structure in its Savannah-area chapter disrupted, other organizations may try to fill that power vacuum, Convery said. It’s a situation law enforcement is closely monitoring, officials said.
It’s not clear how, if at all, the shake-up will affect the Forest Park case.
There, five alleged Outcast members — Donnell “1HQ” McKnight, Nigel “Railroad” Blackwood, Marvin Judge, Shawn Levone Harper and Andrew Young — have been indicted in the April shooting. Their charges include murder and a violation of the street gang act.
The violence unfolded at a motorcycle meet that drew nearly 200 people to a property on 1st Street near Jones Road in Clayton County. At some point, investigators said a fight broke out between members of Outcast and rival Philadelphia-based gang Wheels of Soul, who were in town looking to establish a presence in Georgia.
Anthony Hearns and Isaiah Mack, both alleged Wheels of Soul members, were killed. McKnight and Blackwood were also injured and charged soon after, followed by the three additional suspects.
Their cases remain pending.
Blackwood’s attorney, Kimani King, said the state has yet to let the defense review the evidence against the men, but said his client says he “did not assault anyone, let alone kill anyone.” Attorneys for the other men declined to comment or could not be reached.
Forest Park police have not elaborated on the men’s alleged roles within the club.
The AG’s office did not respond to questions about whether they have been tapped to help with the Clayton case. But Convery said she hopes the success of the Bryan County prosecution sends a message to outlaw motorcycle groups everywhere.
“Just because you don’t fit into the traditional ... definition of what a criminal street gang is, this is very much so a gang. And their conduct, if it’s violent and victimizing other people, no matter who they are, it’s on our radar,” she said.
