Bridgeport Gang Member Sentenced For Racketeering, Tampering

BRIDGEPORT, CT — A Bridgeport gang member has been sentenced to more than 24 years in prison for racketeering and witness tampering, according to a statement from Leonard C Boyle, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut. Shakale Brantley, aka "Charlie Wilson,” "Kellz,” and “Man Man,” 22, will also serve three years of supervised release.

According to prosecutors, federal and local law enforcement have been investigating Bridgeport-based gangs accused of involvement in drug trafficking, murder, and other acts of violence. Brantley was a member of the Original North End (“O.N.E.”), a gang based in the Trumbull Gardens area of Bridgeport that committed acts of violence against rival gang, including the East End gang, the East Side gang, and the PT Barnum gang.

O.N.E. members also robbed drug dealers, sold narcotics, laundered narcotics proceeds, stole cars from inside and outside Connecticut and used them to commit crimes, and tampered with witnesses who might testify against them, according to prosecutors.

On Aug. 8, 2018, Brantley and other O.N.E. members stole a white Jeep Grand Cherokee in Newburgh, NY, and drove it back to Bridgeport. In the following days, Brantley conspired to use the car to kill East End gang members and their allies who Brantley had learned through social media were at a deli on Stratford Avenue in Bridgeport, according to prosecutors.

Although that plan fell through, in the early morning hours of Aug. 13, 2018, O.N.E. members drove the stolen Jeep to Union Avenue in Bridgeport where they shot and killed Len Smith, 25, who they mistook for a rival East End group member, and shot and seriously wounded Smith’s female companion, both of whom were seated in a parked car.

After the shooting, Brantley and other O.N.E. members transported the Jeep to Indian Wells State Park in Shelton where they burned the vehicle to destroy evidence of the murder.

In October 2018 in Bridgeport, and in November 2018 in Stratford, Brantley and other O.N.E. members and associates attacked a marijuana dealer and stole marijuana from him.

After Brantley was arrested on federal charges on March 23, 2020, and while he was in prison, he attempted to solicit others to kill the victim of the marijuana robberies, who Brantley had learned had become a federal witness, in order to prevent Brantley’s prosecution for those crimes.

Brantley called his associates from prison and wrote letters to them in an effort to have his associates kill the robbery victim and then cover his nose with fentanyl to make it appear as if he overdosed.

Brantley pleaded guilty July 12 to one count of engaging in a pattern of racketeering activity and one count of solicitation of witness tampering.