How authorities unraveled Wilmington-Philly gang network in kidnapping, execution

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!

On a warm summer evening in 2021, a green Jeep Grand Cherokee parked near a row home on Wilmington’s East Side. It was just after midnight.

Three men who belonged to the Shotgun Crips gang emerged from the Jeep. One man’s girlfriend waited behind the wheel.

The gang members burst into the brick home and found their target in a bedroom. They struck 35-year-old Mark Sellers in the head with a metal pry bar, bound the bloody man’s hands behind his back with zip-ties and dragged him from the house and into the Jeep.

Sellers was shoved into the back seat and taken to Philadelphia, to the home of Dwayne Alexander, 37, a leader of the Shotgun Crips. Alexander hopped into the Jeep and told the woman to drive to Yeadon, about five miles west of Philly. Another car followed.

It was close to 2 a.m. when the vehicles arrived at an industrial park bordered by the Fernwood Cemetery.

They marched Sellers outside, and one of the men fired a bullet from an assault-style rifle into his head.

Prosecutors convict six people in kidnapping conspiracy

In the four years since the kidnapping and killing of Sellers, who worked for a moving company, details of the gangland violence have been revealed in court papers and federal and state courtrooms in Delaware, where six people have been held accountable for their roles in the brutal crime.

Three men and one woman who prosecutors have identified as Shotgun Crips — Kimon Burton-Roberson, Jamil Salahuddin, Rodney Chambers and Stephanie Bultes-Ramirez — have pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Wilmington to conspiracy to kidnap Sellers.

Shotgun Crip member Josiah Rivera, who was 17 at the time of the killing, pleaded guilty in Delaware Superior Court of first-degree kidnapping, assault, conspiracy and illegal gang participation. He has not yet been sentenced.

The prosecutions culminated this month when a federal jury convicted Shotgun Crips leader Alexander of kidnapping and the more severe charge of kidnaping resulting in death. Prosecutors said Alexander supplied the murder weapon and approved the killing. Under federal law, he’ll get life in prison when he is sentenced later this year.

The other five also face the prospect of lengthy prison terms at their separate sentencings later this year.

Now that the guilt phase of the cases is over, federal prosecutors spoke at length with WHYY News about the crime and the possible motives, their two big breaks in the investigation and their success convicting six gang members.

The Shotgun Crips are part of the Los Angeles-based Crips, which, according to federal authorities, are involved in street sales of cocaine and other drugs as well as assault, auto thefts, burglaries and murders across the country.

The Shotgun Crips have chapters across the country, including Philadelphia and Wilmington. Except for Alexander, all of the Crips prosecuted in the killing of Sellers were in the Wilmington branch, prosecutors said.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Ben Wallace and Michelle Morgan also praised unidentified Wilmington residents who cooperated with law enforcement authorities despite the “don’t snitch” mantra that exists in many high-crime communities.

“We appreciate the way that the Wilmington community rallied around this case in a way that doesn’t always happen,” said Wallace, who would not provide details, saying it was critical to protect witnesses who could face violent retaliation if their cooperation was revealed publicly.

“A lot of very good, hard-working people live in that neighborhood,” Wallace said. “And I hope the takeaway from the case is this: if Delawareans are willing to trust us by coming forward and telling us what they know when a crime, especially a horrible crime like this, is committed in the state, we will repay that trust with our dogged effort and ultimately with just results like this one to keep the state safer.”

Cameras provide clues for police, FBI

Sellers, who prosecutors said was not part of the gang, got on the wrong side of the Shotgun Crips in 2021.

There were two points of contention, prosecutors said.

Sellers and a group of his friends believed Burton-Roberson — who went by the names “K-Rocc’’ and “Rocc-Starr” — had stolen a firearm from one of them, said Wallace, citing trial testimony.

In addition, Burton-Roberson “believed Sellers owed him money and Sellers either didn’t believe he owed him money or was unwilling to pay the money back,” Wallace said.

“And then Burton-Roberson and then the gang took great offense to that.”

The beef festered, but rather than find a resolution, the Shotgun Crips decided to go after Sellers.

Shortly after midnight on July 21, Bultes-Ramirez, who was dating Burton-Roberson, drove his green Jeep to Wilmington. He was inside, along with Salahuddin and Rivera.

The gang had knowledge that Sellers was staying in a rowhome on the East Side, along a poorly lit street in a neighborhood that for decades has been one of the city’s hot spots for crime.

They parked near the house, attacked and removed Sellers, then drove off, completing their audacious kidnapping in just a few minutes.

What they didn’t know, however, was that their visit, from arrival to departure, was captured on a nearby surveillance camera.

Wallace said the footage showed “men going into the home, men pulling Sellers out of the home with his hands bound behind his back, bleeding from the head when he came out of the home.”

That video also provided clear images of what would later become critical evidence — the green Grand Cherokee registered to Burton-Roberson.

But in the moment, that didn’t help Sellers.

A half-hour after the kidnapping, Bultes-Ramirez parked the Jeep outside outside Alexander’s home in Philly. They were met by Chambers, known as “Loco2x,” who had driven his black Nissan sedan from Wilmington.

Alexander — whose street name is “Sleepy” — hopped in the back seat, prosecutors said. He told Bultes-Ramirez to leave the city for the Yeadon industrial park in the 6200 block of Baltimore Avenue. Chambers followed.

They arrived about 2 a.m. The drivers stayed with the vehicles while everyone else got out and took Sellers, his hands still bound, to a remote site.

Using an assault-style rifle Alexander had previously given him, Burton-Roberson shot Sellers once in the head, prosecutors said, citing testimony by other participants in the slaying.

Alexander, as the highest-ranking Shotgun Crips member there, had authorized the killing, prosecutors said.

The gang members left Sellers’ lifeless body on a grassy hillock.

They also left behind a major clue for investigators.

Surveillance video at the industrial park captured what Morgan said was a dark Jeep and most importantly, a “partial” number on the Pennsylvania license plate.

The gang members, unaware that they had left evidence behind, both in Wilmington and Yeadon, returned to Alexander’s home.

Some stayed there and others traveled south on Interstate 95, back to Wilmington.

Police find blood, pry bar in Grand Cherokee

Later that morning, Yeadon police found Sellers body.

They quickly obtained footage from an industrial park camera of the Jeep and the partial license plate. That info was enough for police to determine that the green Jeep was registered to Burton-Roberson.

That same day, Burton-Roberson grew concerned that they might get caught, but also tried to quell concerns among the others. He called Bultes-Ramirez and told his girlfriend “everything would be OK,” but also told her to call the others “if he were ever arrested,” court records shows,

That’s what happened July 26, five days after the killing.

Pennsylvania state troopers pulled over Burton-Roberson, who was driving his Jeep in Delaware County. During the traffic stop, he called his girlfriend to say he was being locked up.

The cops found possible evidence in the Jeep — blood in the back seat where Sellers had been, and a pry bar in the trunk as well as a latex glove that turned out to have Alexander’s DNA on it — court records show.

Burton-Roberson was questioned briefly and released, but after the traffic stop authorities had enough probable cause to get a search warrant for his phone.

No charges were filed immediately in the kidnapping and killing, however, while the FBI and law enforcement authorities in both states collaborated to unravel the conspiracy.

Burton-Roberson didn’t lay low during this period, though.

That December members of a Delaware crime task force pulled over a car in Wilmington’s Southbridge neighborhood. Burton-Roberson, who was a passenger, was carrying a loaded .38-caliber revolver with an obliterated serial number and 5 grams of marijana. He was charged with weapons and other offenses and held in state prison on those counts.

Three months later, in February 2022, the feds lowered the boom.

In a series of indictments, Burton-Roberson, Alexander and Chambers were charged with both kidnapping as well as kidnapping resulting in death — the federal equivalent of a murder charge and a crime that’s eligible for the death penalty.

Bultes-Ramirez and Salahuddin were charged with kidnapping, and the juvenile, Rivera, was charged as an adult in state court.

One by one, the defendants began cooperating, as did residents of Wilmington’s East Side who had potential evidence.

All but Alexander pleaded guilty to kidnapping in federal court, or in Rivera’s case, to the state charges.

And when Alexander faced trial in recent weeks, several testified against him.

Federal authorities decided not to seek the death penalty against Alexander, but, because he was convicted of kidnapping resulting in death, he faces a mandatory life sentence.

Even though Burton-Roberson purportedly pulled the trigger, prosecutors agreed to drop the possible death penalty against him in return for his acceptance of guilt.

Alexander’s attorney would not comment, and Burton-Roberson’s public defender didn’t respond to inquiries from WHYY News.

‘It’s just the gang mentality that creates these situations’

Richard Sparaco, who defended Bultes-Ramirez, disputes prosecutors’ assertions that she was in the gang, but said she and others in the conspiracy got caught up in the frenzy of the conflict.

He said far too many people in American cities, mostly young men, have joined gangs and ended up in prison for years or for life because they didn’t take a step back and think of the possible ramifications for violent acts.

“Individuals get so much pressure from other people that they are hanging out with that they take actions that they never would have taken in a million years,” Sparaco said.

“So it’s just the gang mentality that creates these situations where people die. And Sellers is the prime example. The one who killed him wouldn’t have done it by himself. He had to have the support of the other people. And that’s the big problem with gangs. I don’t know what can be done. I don’t know how to combat this.”

Wallace called this murder by the Shotgun Crips yet another example of senseless violence that is far too pervasive in America.

“Mark Sellers was 35 years old when he died. That is far too young for anyone to go,” Wallace said. “He suffered and died in a way that no one ever should.”

Wallace said the lengthy investigation and prosecutions show that authorities will take every step to catch and punish violent criminals, even if it takes years.

“The message we hope a case like this sends is that we will be absolutely dogged in figuring out each and every person who is involved in something like that and making sure they face justice,” Wallace said. “That’s what we have done in this case and it is what we will always do.”