Police arrest ten people with ties to criminal gang
Thursday, March 19th, 2009 by Ana X. Ceron
Harry Lee Cooper Jr.
FORT PIERCE — Ten people with links to a long-running gang in the city are behind bars, with some facing charges that police have filed for the first time in the department’s history.
But authorities are asking the public’s help to find another two men they’ve linked to a gang operating in the city for more than a decade: Harry Lee Cooper Jr., 24, and Willie Works Jr., 22.
Police announced the arrests on Thursday, saying that investigators for the first time charged three men with threatening victims to help protect a gang leader.
Willie Works Jr.
That leader, police said, is Ned Childress, 29, who’s been at the St. Lucie County jail since August on an aggravated assault charge.
From jail Childress had been directing orders to Oliver Bell, 21; Childress’s 24-year-old girlfriend Krysty Bradley; Henry Housing, 34; Yolanda Lampkin, 40; Andravious Pride, 22; and Dujuan Warren, 27, court records show.
“They miss their general,” Childress allegedly told Lampkin during a recorded phone conversation. “The general is got to get back out there.”
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