Bloods gang member charged with Baldwin murder, feds say

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A member of the Blooods street gang has been indicted on a number of charges, including the 2012 murder of a Westbury man in Baldwin Harbor, federal prosecutors announced.

Brooklyn resident Dylan Cruz, a.k.a. “L Banga,” was indicted on Dec. 12, 2018 and charged with racketeering, conspiring to kill rival gang members, murder in-aid-of-racketeering, armed robbery and related firearms counts. The previously sealed indictment was revealed in a press release Jan. 9.

“The charges in the indictment reflect the extreme danger Cruz posed to communities on Long Island and in Brooklyn as he allegedly killed a man mistakenly thought to have betrayed a gang member, shot and paralyzed a suspected rival gang member and wounded two bystanders in furtherance of the Bloods’ criminal enterprise,” Richard Donoghue, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.

Cruz allegedly engaged in gang war with rival gangs between 2010 and 2016 in Brooklyn and Nassau County. According to prosecutors, he and others killed Westbury resident Anthony Richards after they falsely suspected him of betraying the Bloods. The members shot at his car while it was parked in Baldwin Harbor, killing him and severely injuring a passenger.

Cruz also allegedly shot a rival gang member in Roosevelt in November 2010, paralyzing him. He also is charged with committing a gun-point robbery at a car dealership in North Merrick in June 2016, in which an employee was pistol-whipped by him.