MARTINEZ — In the months before 17-year-old Anthony Westbrook Jr. was shot and killed outside his home while showing a family member his Chevy Impala, a Pittsburg gang was plotting to kill him and others, authorities said at the start of a murder trial Wednesday.
Westbrook, an Antioch resident, was hit once in the chest by a bullet fired from a passing vehicle a little before midnight on Sept. 4, 2022, on the 1100 block of Macaulay Street in Antioch. The bullet went through both of his lungs but he was able to run a short distance before falling down and dying just a few feet from his home.
A suspect, 20-year-old Anthony McCoy, was arrested in February. Now, less than six months later, his case is already in a jury trial that is expected to last at least two weeks. At the trial’s start Wednesday, Deputy District Attorney Kate Dunbar said the prosecution’s case would come down to digital evidence putting McCoy in the same location as the shooting, as well as McCoy’s own conversations with members of a Pittsburg gang that communicated on an Instagram chat group.
“This case is about the cold, calculated killing of a teen outside his home, simply because he was a rival gang member,” Dunbar told jurors in her opening statement.
The charging documents allege that the group chat among members of a gang known as the Bully Boys included discussions of shooting rivals dating back to April 26, 2022. In some instances, gang members allegedly discussed how to pull off a shooting in Pittsburg, a city rife with public surveillance cameras monitored by police. In another conversation, they mention going after referenced “The Twins,” meaning Westbrook and his twin brother, authorities say.
The Bully Boys are a small but growing gang based in Pittsburg, which made headlines in 2017 for teaming up with a white gang in a massive fraud scheme. Their rivals included the Antioch-based Klap S— gang and the Pittsburg based- Midtown gang, whose membership included Westbrook, Dunbar said.
McCoy’s lawyer opted to delay his opening statement to jurors until after the prosecution has rested, meaning it’s unclear how he will defend against the charges.
Dunbar didn’t describe McCoy’s exact role in the killing, just that prosecutors will prove his GPS records demonstrate he was inside a red Nissan Altima that the suspects were in. There were at least two people, a driver and a person in a front passenger seat who fired the shots, she said.
Dunbar added that McCoy used the Instagram chat group to brag about his role in a shooting at an East Contra Costa memorial for another Midtown member, in which one person was shot in the head and another in the leg.
Source: www.mercurynews.com