BMF: The Rise and Fall of Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family

by Shalhoup, Mara

  Debbie had been through a lot. Her marriage had failed, leaving her to raise four kids on her own—until she later fell in love with a handsome Puerto Rican boxer. She’d weathered several years in one of Atlanta’s sketchiest neighborhoods, a few blocks off Boulevard, only to see the area begin to turn around. She’d steered her three boys through several arrests on minor drug charges—charges that they beat. (Another, more serious aggravated assault charge against Prince proved baseless.) Debbie knew her boys would find trouble, as boys do, but she raised them well enough to know they’d somehow find a way past it.

  Now that her children were grown, with their own aspirations, Debbie felt she could finally start tackling her own dreams. Before moving to the United States as a young woman, Debbie grew up in eastern Jamaica, and she was part of a culture that prized three things. The first is Rastafarianism, a religion that honors the African roots from which Debbie’s ancestors were displaced, respects the value of all living things, and eschews the corruption of “Babylon,” or modern society. Intertwined with Rastafarianism is another of Jamaica’s most influential contributions: reggae, dub, and dancehall music. Those genres heavily influenced hip-hop, and Debbie’s sons looked to their musical heritage for inspiration as they tried to make music of their own.

  Not least of Jamaica’s cultural offerings—not to Debbie, anyway—is the country’s food. Debbie’s longtime dream was to open her own restaurant. She wanted to serve Jamaica’s staples, the spicy dishes adapted from African, Chinese, and East Indian dishes, but somehow uniquely Jamaican: curried goat, grilled plantains, barbecued tofu, and jerked chicken. She’d held down various office jobs over the years, but in the summer of 2004, Debbie felt ready to start something new. And with her children finding their independence, her goal seemed within her grasp.

  Her daughter, who’d grown into a lovely likeness of Debbie, was the most responsible of the clan, despite being the baby. And her sons, whom Debbie treated like royalty, were working to carve out a spot in Atlanta’s hip-hop scene. Her eldest, Rasheym (everyone called him “Sheym”), was learning to shoot video, and Prince and Raschaka (who went by “Tattoo”) were writing and recording rap songs on a shoestring budget. The Drummond boys closely followed Atlanta’s hip-hop players and the happenings in the city’s clubs. And so it was to be expected that Prince and Tattoo, along with their cousin and three of their friends, headed to a Midtown club called the Velvet Room for what was hyped as the club’s final night. If you were young, into the rap scene, and interested in rubbing shoulders with those who made the industry tick, there was no better place to be. On July 24, 2004, and well into the following morning, all the Velvet Room regulars would be on hand to offer the club a final salute.

  Though small compared with other Midtown venues, the Velvet Room, up until the end, pulled in a steady crowd. And on its last night, the long rectangular space was as swanky as ever. The club’s swooping drapes were no less dramatic, its red velvet ceiling still sultry, its crystal chandeliers just as sparkling. And the crowd of beautiful people, hip-hop flossers, and wannabe players was in full force. The neighborhood itself had its share of mega-clubs and celebrity sightings, but it was still a more organic place than its neighbor to the north, Buckhead. In Midtown, there were fewer of the tensions that arose between Buckhead’s revelers and residents. There was a party atmosphere, for sure, but not quite an out-of-control one.

  And yet as the Velvet Room’s final night wore on, the vibe was getting more and more like Buckhead. Even after last call had long come and gone, the crowd was still spilling from the doors of the club, which faced Peachtree Street, and down into the sloped parking lot behind the building. The scene out back was not unlike the one inside. Music was blaring from the speakers of well-buffed cars. Groups of drunk and emboldened guys were trying to hook up with the departing cliques of girls. Some of the men in the crowd, a conspicuous group in a caravan of conspicuous cars including a silver Lamborghini, gray Ferrari, and black Porsche SUV, were even clutching bottles of Cristal that they had smuggled from the club.

  In the middle of the lot were Prince’s three friends: Marc, who at age twenty was the youngest of the three; Black, the quietest of the group; and Jameel, who at six-foot-five towered over the other two. Jameel had dipped into his car, a white Mitsubishi, to listen to music while Marc and Black chatted up some girls. They all were waiting on Prince, who’d been the last in their circle to leave the Velvet Room.

  Prince’s brother Tattoo and his cousin Jahmar had been the first to reach the parking lot. They stopped at Tattoo’s car, and Tattoo was ready to roll. But Jahmar decided to stay. Just before Tattoo took off, Jahmar warned him, “Don’t drive all crazy.” Tattoo drove north on Peachtree and cut over toward Georgia Tech. Jahmar headed back toward the club. He didn’t want to leave without Prince.

  Back in the parking lot, Prince’s friend Jameel was still sitting in his Mitsubishi, nodding to the music, when he glanced out the rear window and saw that Prince had finally left the club. He was shuffling down the hill toward the parking lot, Jahmar at his side. The cousins cut similar images as they made their way down. They both sported baggy jeans and Nikes. Jahmar wore a striped blue shirt, his dreadlocks tucked behind a blue Bullets cap, while Prince wore a gray T-shirt and let his shorter dreads hang loose. They were alike in stature, too. Both about five-eight, maybe five-nine, definitely under 150 pounds.

  The security guards were still working crowd control in front of the club when Prince and Jahmar met up with Marc and Black. Those two were working the crowd out back—or at least trying to. They were vying for the attention of some girls when the motorcade of high-end cars that had been idling in the parking lot began to roll out. It was a slow process. The cars had to be lined up in the correct order by the crew’s bodyguards and lower-rung members before gliding one-by-one to their next destination, which some of its members decided would be Club 112, one of Atlanta’s few after-hours venues.

  As the cars fell into their customary formation, the last one in line, the black Porsche SUV, nearly backed into Prince. Prince tapped the side of the Porsche. “Yo homeboy,” he called out. “You hittin’ me.”

  The driver, a chubby guy with a goatee, jumped out. At least four other members of his crew were close behind. Two of them were still clutching their Cristal bottles.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” the driver said, bowing up at Prince. “Y’all motherfuckers don’t ever touch my car again.”

  One of the guys in Prince’s camp, most likely Prince, turned to the driver and smarted off: “You aren’t running nothing.”

  Marc, the youngest of Prince’s friends, noticed that the crew began to form up, as if part of a single entity. He started backing away, explaining that they didn’t want any trouble. His friends agreed, but there was little they could do. The crew jumped all four of them.

  Marc and Black tried to defend themselves as best they could, but in the flurry of fists and feet and glass, they both had a hard time seeing what was going on. Jameel, still in his Mitsubishi, quickly realized there was trouble. He was parked about ten feet away from the fight and couldn’t see his four friends—just bottles flying and fists swinging. But he was worried. He grabbed his .40-caliber Glock from the glove box and jumped out of the car.

  The first thing he saw was Jahmar on the ground. Several men were stomping on his head. He didn’t see Prince or the others, but he knew the odds were stacked way against them.

  Jameel did the only thing he thought would help. He dared not fire into the crowd. Instead, he pointed his gun in the air and squeezed off two rounds.

  Seconds later, two more shots rang out.

  When Marc heard the gunshots, he hit the ground and rolled toward the bumper of Jameel’s car. Glancing up, he watched as the crew that had attacked him scattered. He chased after one of them, who ducked into a car and sped off. The entire motorcade was peeling out of the parking lot.

  Tires were screeching. Jameel was screaming. Doze
ns of onlookers were running in every direction. And when Marc saw what Jameel had seen—their friend Jahmar on the ground, bleeding like crazy—he started running, too. He was desperate to make sure Jahmar hadn’t been shot.

  Crouching close to Jahmar’s face, Marc realized that no, he hadn’t been. But he’d been beaten, badly. Both his eyes were swollen shut. His left eyelid and cheek had been sliced open. Blood was pooling under his head. He was moving, but barely. He was totally incoherent.

  Where were the rest of them? Marc looked up, scanning the parking lot. All he saw, a few feet off in the distance, was Prince.

  He started running again, but before he got to Prince, someone grabbed him from behind—club security.

  When the two security guards in front of the club had heard the initial shots, followed seconds later by a couple more, they rushed toward the parking lot. The first thing they noticed was a bunch of fancy cars speeding off. Then, they saw people running—scattering in so many directions that the guards couldn’t tell where the trouble was. But when the crowd parted a little, the security guards found five men huddled on the ground: Prince and Jahmar, who were bad off but still breathing, and Marc, Jameel, and Black, who were pretty much fine. Except for Jameel’s screams.

  The three friends were whisked away so that the guards and the arriving Atlanta officers could secure the scene. Jameel, frantic to know what was going on, kept asking the security guard if Prince and Jahmar were going to be all right.

  “Why do you want to know?” the security guard asked. “Were you involved?”

  “Yeah, I was right here.”

  “What happened?”

  Jameel explained to the guard that he’d been sitting in his car when he noticed a fight had broken out—and that his friends had been jumped. He told the officer that he grabbed his gun and fired in the air to get the fighting to stop. After that, he said, he heard more shots. He said he stashed the gun under the seat of the car before rushing to his friends’ side.

  The guard told Jameel to remain silent. He cuffed him and placed him in the back of one of the officers’ patrol cars.

  Marc, meanwhile, was yelling over and over for an ambulance. To quiet him, the other security guard placed him in a patrol car, too—but not before Marc reached for his cell phone and dialed a number he hated to call. When Tattoo answered, Marc told him what had happened to his brother:

  “Prince got hit,” he said.

  Tattoo whipped his car around and headed back toward the club. Still in the patrol car, Marc watched and waited. When the ambulance finally arrived, Jahmar awoke from his battered daze—and started swinging at the paramedics who were trying to help him. He wouldn’t remember any of it, but he would fight them all the way to Grady Memorial Hospital, and once there, he’d turn combative toward the hospital’s staff, too. After that, he would slip into a coma. He would stay there for twenty-eight days.

  As Jahmar’s ambulance pulled away, Marc continued to keep an eye on the scene from the back of the patrol car. He was still holding out hope. He believed Prince had a chance.

  He didn’t. One of the two bullets that hit Prince penetrated his right forearm, fragmenting beneath his skin. The other bullet struck him in the middle of his back. It traveled slightly upward, grazing his liver and causing a serious internal rupture. The force of the bullet also bruised his right lung before continuing on through the right ventricle of his heart. It exited just under his left nipple, leaving a small metal remnant behind.

  The paramedics didn’t even try to help Prince. They just laid a sheet over him.

  Atlanta homicide detective Marc Cooper sped west on Eleventh Street toward the north end of the Velvet Room parking lot, responding to the call of shots fired. He arrived at 4:22 A.M., seventeen minutes after the security guards heard the gunfire. By the time Cooper rolled up, the men who attacked Prince and his friends were long gone. But they did leave behind a few clues—clues that were eerily similar to another scene Cooper had investigated eight months earlier and a few miles up Peachtree.

  Like the men killed in the other incident, at Club Chaos, the two Velvet Room victims were attacked in the club’s parking lot. (Fortunately, this time one of them would live.) Like before, a stream of high-end cars had fled the scene. And again, there was a strange silence blanketing the witnesses.

  But this time the assailants were sloppier. A few yards from where Cooper discovered the two shell casings from Jameel’s Glock—as well as the two other casings discharged from the 10 mm that shot Prince—he came across a pair of champagne bottles. He asked the crime scene technician to take swabs from the mouths of the bottles. One of the men involved in the attack might have left behind some DNA.

  A second officer discovered another significant clue: two phones. One of them, a Nextel BlackBerry, bore the greeting, “Bleu, BMF Entertainment.” The other was later traced to Deron “D-Shot” Hall, who was listed in DEA files as a known associate of the Black Mafia Family.

  But what Cooper really needed were the same two things that had eluded him in the Chaos investigation: a murder weapon and a witness. None of Prince’s friends wanted to give statements to the police. Jameel had to give one, because he’d fired a weapon. But the statement was brief, and it was consistent with other evidence. Jameel didn’t see the fight break out, because he was sitting in his car. He did fire his gun, but only in an attempt to break up the fight. And though he heard gunshots shortly thereafter, he didn’t see who shot Prince. “I can’t describe anybody,” he said.

  Cooper let Jameel go. He was not charged with a crime.

  For weeks after the incident, while Prince’s cousin Jahmar was still in a coma, Cooper tried to convince Marc, Black, and Tattoo to provide written statements of what they saw that night. Though Tattoo wasn’t in the parking lot during the fight, he returned to the scene shortly thereafter, and Cooper suspected he might have an idea about who shot his brother. But the young men refused. Marc finally agreed to meet the detective, then failed to show up for the interview. When Cooper called to find out why, Marc said he didn’t trust the police and didn’t want to meet with him after all. He hung up.

  Finally, Cooper reached someone who could help. He got in touch with Prince’s mother.

  After she got the news about her son, Debbie lay in bed for weeks. Through the haze of grief, bits and pieces of what had happened seeped in. Then they cascaded. Debbie quickly became familiar with something called the Black Mafia Family. And she told the detective what she knew: The boys had little faith in the police—and a lot of fear of the suspects. She said BMF was a powerful organized crime family—so organized that they had sent word to her, via the street, that they didn’t intend for her son to die. If she would handle this the street way, and bypass the police, she was told she’d be rewarded. She said the offer, which she refused, was extended more than once.

  She then told Cooper that she’d do her best to convince the boys to talk. On the evening of September 15, 2004, more than six weeks after Prince was killed, Marc, Tattoo, and Jahmar arrived at the Atlanta homicide office to give their statements. (Black did not join them.) Each of the three spoke for less than thirty minutes. Marc went first. He said he didn’t see who shot Prince, because he’d dropped to the ground as soon as he heard the first shots ring out. “Can you further describe the driver that exited the vehicle?” Cooper asked. Marc said he didn’t want to talk anymore.

  Jahmar, barely two weeks out of the hospital, was up next. Because he was in a coma for so long, the news about Prince was still fresh in his mind. “I didn’t even know that my cousin was dead,” he told the detective. He talked about leaving the club with Tattoo, then going back to grab Prince. He vaguely recalled one of the attackers drawing a gun, but other than that, he remembered little about the fight.

  “Would you be willing to testify in court?” Cooper asked.

  “No,” Jahmar said. “I’ve been through trauma. I have fear for myself and my family. I don’t want to testify against this pers
on.”

  Tattoo went last. Cooper quickly got to the point.

  “Are you familiar with BMF Entertainment?” the detective asked.

  “Yes.”

  “To your knowledge, were they involved in this incident?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know they were involved?”

  “That’s what I’ve heard from people on the streets.”

  The information wasn’t exactly going to hold up in court, and Cooper knew it.

  “Why have you been reluctant to provide a statement?” he asked.

  “I’ve just been mourning.”

  None of the young men was the witness Cooper needed. But the right witness did exist—a man who was close enough to the fight to see what happened, yet far enough removed not to have committed a major felony. Whether he would talk was another matter.

  The day after the Velvet Room shooting, BMF chief financial officer William “Doc” Marshall got an angry phone call from California. Terry was on the line, and he wanted Doc to tell him what had happened the night before.

  Doc told Terry that normally, when there’s a fight like that, the whole crew will jump in, and it might drag on for a bit. But this time, it was a half dozen of their guys on four smaller ones. He said the smaller guys got banged up pretty quick.

  That’s what was so perplexing to Doc, and what he tried to explain to Terry. It just didn’t make any sense. The guys on the ground were done for. Doc said there’d been warning shots from the other camp, but everyone knew they were just that: a warning. The shots were too far away for anyone to truly believe that a gun had been aimed at them. In fact, the crew already was back in their cars when one of them, for reasons unknown, grabbed his gun out of the Porsche. According to Doc, the gunman was a high-ranking member, a guy who didn’t need to bother with shit like that, yet he decided to run back to the scene, to stand over the guy who was lying defenseless on the pavement, and to pump two rounds into him.

  The guy on the ground shouldn’t have been killed, Doc said. He wasn’t sure why that trigger was pulled.