Two Bronx gang members busted in a takedown last year now face federal charges for carjacking a man at gun and knifepoint — and they may be responsible for a string of similar robberies, federal prosecutors allege.
Abdoul Azika, 20, and Jaquell Blackwell, 19, both members of the “5zzly Crew,” an offshoot of the Blood Hound Brims, stuck a gun and a knife in their victim’s face on Brook and Tremont Sts. in Garden City, L.I., on March 19, 2023, according to federal prosecutors in Brooklyn.
Both of them left evidence linking them to the robbery when cops found the stolen Honda Civic in the Bronx a day later, according to a criminal complaint.
Blackwell left a fingerprint on the back license plate attached to the stolen car, while Azika let the car’s Bluetooth link up to his phone, which saved his mother’s phone number into the vehicle’s computer under the name “mama,” the complaint alleges.
The Civic’s GPS computer also showed the car parked outside Azika’s home shortly after the robbery, the complaint alleges.
The two men are also responsible for more carjackings in Queens and Long Island, the feds allege, though they have yet to be charged for those crimes.
“For over a year, the defendants terrorized innocent drivers across Queens and Long Island through a string of violent, armed carjackings,” federal prosecutors wrote in a Wednesday court filing.
Azika and Blackwell have been locked up since September, when they and 10 others of the 5zzly Crew were indicted by the Bronx DA’s office. The gang waged a years-long campaign of violence that left an innocent bystander dead in June 2021.
The duo were charged in the Bronx with four robberies and two shootings as part of the indictment. In one episode from October 2021, Azika and Blackwell robbed an on-duty parole officer of a cell phone and gun, and Azika and another accomplice used the gun in a shooting in Crotona, prosecutors allege.