Member of Yonkers Blood Stones Gang Pleads Guilty to Attempted Murder
Defendant: Samuel “Benji” Mapp (DOB 11/5/90)
Sept. 21, 2018 -- Westchester County District Attorney Anthony A. Scarpino, Jr. announced that Samuel “Benji” Mapp pleaded guilty Thursday to three counts of Attempted Murder in the Second degree, class B violent felonies, and one count of Conspiracy to Commit Murder in the Second Degree, a class B felony. Westchester County Court Judge Barry Warhit accepted the plea. Mapp will be sentenced March 21, 2019, to 12 years state prison.
Background
Mapp was charged following a gang sweep in the Nodine Hill section of Yonkers at the beginning of May where 12 members of the violent street gang known as the Blood Stones Army were charged in a multi-count indictment. The investigation leading to the arrest was a collaboration between the Yonkers Police Gang Unit and the District Attorney’s Office Investigations Division Gang, Firearms and Narcotics Bureau.
Specifically, the incidents which led to the three Attempted Murder charges are as follows:
- On Jan. 27, 2017, Mapp fired several shots at a gang rival outside of a grocery store on Vineyard Avenue in Yonkers. He missed hitting the gang rival but one of the bullets struck an innocent bystander in the right knee, giving him a life-long injury.
- On Feb. 5, 2017, Mapp chased a different gang rival in the area of Ravine Avenue in Yonkers. The defendant fired several shots at that man but missed him.
- On March 30, 2017, Mapp and two fellow gang members chased the same rival gang member into a grocery store on Yonkers Avenue. Inside the store, Mapp and the other two punched, kicked and ultimately stabbed their rival causing him to sustain a puncture wound to his abdomen and a punctured lung. He survived.
On the count of Conspiracy, Mapp pleaded guilty to conspiring with other Blood Stones members to assert control over the Nodine Hill area by means of violence, including, but not limited to, shootings, assaults and firearms possession. Mapp and other members and associates were parties to a conspiratorial agreement to kill rivals.
The case was prosecuted by District Attorney’s Office Investigations Division Gang, Firearms and Narcotics Bureau.
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In compliance with the Rules of Professional Conduct, Rule 3.6, you are advised that a charge is merely an accusation and that a defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.
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