Murder on South Side leads to racketeering charge for purported Rack City gang members

Minutes after the midday murder of a man working on his dirt bike on Chicago’s South Side, Christopher “Shoota” Singleton allegedly taunted a rival street gang member with a screenshot from Twitter that quoted police saying, “We Need Tape!”

“We needddd tapeeeeee,” Singleton allegedly wrote on Instagram on June 1, 2021, mocking the rival.

But the rival wrote back, “Y’all shoot a innocent.” He went on to call Singleton and his crew “rookies” in a series of social media messages that investigators would use to connect Singleton to the shooting.

Nearly three years later, a federal grand jury has indicted Singleton and three other purported members of the Rack City street gang for their alleged roles in the murder of Ogonnia Okeke in the Princeton Park neighborhood.

The indictment levels a racketeering charge against the four men for allegedly killing Okeke to maintain and increase their positions in the gang. Charged along with Singleton, 24, are Joshua “Twiggz” Broughton, 34, Jaron “JRacks” Davis, 22, and Grieg “Sixty” Macon, 27.

The charge carries a potential death sentence but is otherwise punishable by a mandatory life sentence. All four defendants are already in custody.

Rack City, a faction of the Black P Stone Nation also known as the Racketeers, claims territory around West 93rd and South Halsted streets, records show. For years they’ve been in a violent rivalry with a Gangster Disciples faction known as the Princeton Park GDs, authorities say.

The indictment adds to the significant federal prosecutions of Chicago street gangs in recent years, including of the Four Corner Hustlers, Wicked Town, Goonie Boss and O Block gangs.

It also expands a case brought against Singleton last June involving a federal threat charge. The FBI alleged that Singleton had used social media accounts to claim credit for Okeke’s death, threaten violence and challenge a member of the Princeton Park GDs to reveal his location.

A criminal complaint described how Chicago police found Okeke on the back porch of a home in the 9100 block of South Wentworth around 12:45 p.m. on June 1, 2021. He’d suffered multiple gunshot wounds.

He was pronounced dead at University of Chicago Medical Center.

Detectives learned from witnesses and video that he’d been on his back porch working on his dirt bike when he was shot, records show. Investigators discovered three types of shell casings at the scene.

Private surveillance footage showed three people getting into a black SUV after at least one of them fired shots in Okeke’s direction.

Singleton allegedly shared screenshots from Twitter with a rival gang member 10 minutes after the shooting, investigators said. That’s when the rival insisted Okeke had been an “innocent,” records show.

In another exchange five days later, the rival again told Singleton, “That’s what I be tryna tell y’all we ain’t loss nobody out our circle at all soo how y’all f---in us up and the dead guys we got y’all ain’t do for a fact just keep it cause innocents don’t count gang.”

In another exchange, the rival questioned whether Singleton was even responsible for Okeke’s death. But authorities say Singleton wound up sharing videos that appear to depict him and others in a vehicle around the time of the shooting.

Investigators questioned Singleton last year about his social media posts after his arrest on other matters, records show. Authorities say he then placed 10 calls from the Cook County sheriff's office in front of law enforcement, allegedly telling people that officials “had everything” and that people need to “throw out the garbage” — meaning to delete social media accounts.

Those calls were not recorded, the feds say. But Singleton also allegedly told someone in a recorded call that he needed to make bond because “I’m finna go far away bro … far, far, far, far, far, I wish I could tell you bro, its gonna f--- your mind.”