A sweeping gang takedown in Queens targeting the syndicate behind the murder of a 66-year-old innocent victim has brought little solace to his grieving daughter, who said that though she’s glad to see law enforcement cleaning up the streets, it doesn’t fill the void in her life.
“Every day I go through the day without my dad. As events come up, as I progress in my academics, and in my professional life, I think of all the things I could have told him, and maybe what he would have told me,” Gabriella Alcindor, 26, said of her Haitian immigrant father, William Alcindor.
“I know that he wasn’t ready to go. It wasn’t his time. That’s something that could never be given back. Even when this comes to a close, at least his case in particular, nothing is gonna close that hole in my heart,” she continued.
In the largest-ever takedown of a single gang in Queens, law enforcement netted a trove of firearms and arrested 32 of members of the Bad-Co Ballout gang, who participated in a bloody turf war that plagued neighborhoods in southeast Queens since 2021, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced Thursday.
“They terrorized rivals, and harmed innocent bystanders, to maintain and expand their geographic dominance,” Katz said. “Tragically, three people were murdered due to this gang’s indiscriminate violence.”
The gang was responsible for at least 13 shootings — including the three homicides, Katz said.
Alcindor’s daughter, who works as a case worker for a nonprofit serving Queens families and youth, said it takes more than arrests to combat gun violence.
“I’m glad some progress has been made, and they’re doing their best to clean it up. But there is more work to be done,” she said. “There are programs. The community has the resources but how do we get the people who need the resources to the resources? At the end of the day, if you’re not addressing the root of this problem then this will continue.”
On Sept. 16, 2024, a 15-year-old Bad-Co Ballout member got into an altercation with a rival gang member on Farmers Blvd. near 117th Rd. in St. Albans and shot at his opponent around 4:50 p.m. But the barrage of gunfire instead struck Alcindor, who happened to be driving by, hitting him once in the forehead and twice in the chest, officials said.
Alcindor lost control of his Nissan Rogue and crashed into a 23-year-old woman sitting on the sidewalk, before slamming into a building. Alcindor, a grandfather of three, who was on his way home from work, died from his wounds. The 23-year-old woman still has mobility issues today because of the lower-body trauma she suffered in the crash, Katz said.
Alcindor’s youngest daughter said she wonders if she’ll ever know what sparked the violence in the first place.
“Shooting at a rival gang for what? For what? What was the point? [An altercation] over what?” she said. “It’s all just a waste of time, a waste of energy, and just completely pointless. Every synonym you can think of for how incredibly ridiculous it is.”
Alcindor’s teenage killer was arrested two days after the shooting and held without bail after his arraignment on charges of second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
His daughter said she has sat in the gallery at every court hearing.
“I’m not going to let him feel that we’re not here and we don’t care. We’re not taking this lightly. I don’t want him to feel comfortable with what he did,” she said. “I don’t care how much pain it brings me to sit in that court and see his face every time I go. That’s part of me getting my own justice.”
Emma Seiwell/New York Daily News
Mourners are pictured at a Farmingdale, Long Island, cemetery during the burial of William Alcindor, an immigrant grandfather who was struck and killed by a stray bullet while driving home from work on Sept. 16, 2024. (Emma Seiwell / New York Daily News)
Alcindor’s killer was not charged again in this week’s 97-count indictment. Two other teenage defendants who handed him the loaded gun were indicted Thursday with criminal possession of a weapon.
Alcindor’s daughter said she and her two older siblings have leaned on one another as they continue to grieve.
“We know we have to be stronger than ever before because we’re trying to be an example to the younger ones within our family that this is not going to break us and that we can still do good, and be good people, no matter how much pain we feel,” she said. “We’re not gonna change who we are and we remember at the end of the day, we are Alcindors.”
“We carry our dad’s name and we know that it means something,” she said. “Just keeping that in mind is really how we cope.”
Alcindor’s killing came two years after the gang’s first murder. On Nov. 10, 2022, around 3 p.m., ringleader Jahvon Attapoku, who goes by the nickname “Shady,” and four others robbed rival gang member Mark Greene, 18, of his gun outside his Kew Gardens Hills high school, Katz and law enforcement sources said.
Bad-Co Ballout member Jeff Joseph, who goes by the nickname “Havoc,” then pulled out a loaded gun and fatally shot Greene multiple times. Greene was waiting for the Q20 bus at 77th Road and Main St. in the residential neighborhood when he was killed.
Joseph, 21, was arrested Wednesday for the slaying, and indicted on murder and conspiracy, among a slew of other charges. A Queens judge ordered him held without bail at his arraignment.
“I’m glad they got the alleged killer. He can now rest,” a neighbor of Greene’s in St. Albans said Friday. “[He] never deserved that.”
The 28-year-old woman, who considered Greene “like a little brother,” said she did not know anything about him being in a gang.
The gang’s third murder victim in their spree of staggering violence was a member of their own crew — 20-year-old Ikechukwu Onodu.
On Jan. 27, 2025, a teenage Bad-Co Ballout member who goes by the nickname “Lucky” took it upon himself to execute Onodu, whom he believed to be a police informant, officials said.
“Lucky” lured Onodu to an apartment complex on 209th St. near 86th Drive in Queens Village with a fake invite to the filming of a music video.
The teen shot Onodu point blank around 4:40 p.m. in the building vestibule, where there were no working cameras. A law enforcement source said there was no evidence Onodu was actually an informant.
After his slaying, Onodu’s grandmother described him as a “very nice, quiet boy” who had no enemies as far as she knew.
“Very beautiful boy. He was trying to get into college,” she previously told The News. “We are shocked.”
Onodu’s killer, whose name and age are being withheld because he is a minor, was indicted for murder and ordered held without bail at his Queens arraignment, officials said.
Aside from the three killings, several others were shot and wounded by the gang’s members, often in broad daylight. One teenage girl was struck in the leg by a bullet that flew into her St. Albans home. She recovered.
With Julian Roberts-Grmela
