Man pleads guilty to 2015 Bloods street gang killing in Flanders
Terrill Latney in a police photograph. Credit: SCPD
A key associate of the Bloods street gang that authorities linked to violent activity on the East End pleaded guilty Friday to killing a man in a case of mistaken identity.
Terrill Latney, 40, of Riverhead, who uses the street names Motis and Mo, admitted in federal court in Central Islip his role in drug dealing and in a 2015 killing in Flanders.
Latney had been ordered by the leader of the Red Stone Gorillas set to kill a rival Bloods named Trendell Walker — not the murder victim Thomas LaColla, 27, of Riverhead, officials said.
Walker, a Bloods who uses the name Live Wire, awaits sentencing after pleading guilty to another unrelated murder. That murder involved the 2017 shooting death of a 15-year-old leaving a “Night Out Against Crime “ rally in a North Bellport park.
The murder of the 15-year-old by Walker and the unsuccessful attempted murder of Walker were unrelated, sources familiar with the cases said.
Latney was among more than a dozen members or associates of the Red Stone Gorillas set, or chapter, of the Bloods,. They have been charged since 2018 with racketeering, murder, robberies, narcotics trafficking and firearms crimes, officials have said. He and the other defendants were arrested in a large-scale crackdown of violent activity on the East End, law enforcement officials said.
He was the first of those arrested to plead to a crime of violence, other than drug dealing, in the crackdown as a result of the investigation by the FBI and Suffolk and Riverhead police departments in 2018.
There are a number of Bloods sets on the East End, who are not only at war with their gang’s traditional rivals, the Crips street gang, but also with each other, according to officials.
“On November 17, 2015 I participated in an attempt to murder Trendell Walker, a rival of the Stones, by driving three co-conspirators, armed with firearms, to and away from the location … where the three co-conspirators, who were members of the Bloods shot and killed Thomas Lacolla, a friend of Walker’s, while they were attempting to kill Walker,” Latney said.
Latney is a long time East End drug dealer who was sentenced to 3 to 6 years in state prison in 2007 for providing drugs on the Shinnecock Indian reservation, according to newspaper reports.
Eastern District Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Maffei, who is prosecuting the case along with Nicole Boeckmann, said in court investigators recovered 39 shell casings at the scene of the Lacolla killing that had been fired from three different guns.
Several members of Lacolla’s family were in court but declined to comment afterward, as did Latney’s attorney, Neil Checkman.
Maffei and Boeckmann also declined to comment.
Latney faces up to 30 years in prison when he is sentenced under the terms of a plea deal.
Walker, the target of the intended murder is himself awaiting sentencing for the 2007 murder of 15-year-old Alvin Brothers. Brothers was with a group that had left a “Night Against Crime” rally in a North Bellport.
Bob Kessler covers federal law, including law enforcement agencies such as the FBI, DEA, IRS and ATF, as well as the federal courts.
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