Two young men were sentenced to life in prison on Friday for what prosecutors described as gang-related murders in Wilmington.
Elijah Coffield, 20, and Gregory Wing, 21, were both sentenced to life in prison in addition to several more years for a series of murders and nonfatal shootings that primarily took place in 2020 and were carried out in the name of the NorthPak gang, according to evidence presented in a two-week trial earlier this year.
Another 21-year-old who was the getaway driver in one of those murders was also sentenced to decades in prison.
Coffield and Wing were first charged with murder in the deaths of 17-year-old Ollier “Slim” Henry, 19-year-old Taquan “Tink” Davis and 21-year-old Shareef Hamilton in June 2021 as part of a sweeping gang indictment that targeted more than a dozen young men that prosecutors said are NorthPak members.
At trial, Coffield was convicted of killing Henry and Hamilton, while Wing was convicted of killing Henry and Davis along with multiple nonfatal shootings.
Deputy Attorney General Joe Grubb said the victims were perceived as rivals to the gang and other people who just happened to be standing in the vicinity of the gunfire.
“Shareef Hamilton had nothing to do with anything NorthPak-related,” Grubb emphasized to presiding Judge Ferris Wharton.
Their first-degree murder convictions left Wharton no choice but to sentence the men to life imprisonment. Still, family members of the victims packed the courtroom.
“You don’t understand what y’all do to people,” one victim’s mother said. “It is pitiful what y’all do to people.”
Grubb told the judge the motive for the shootings was “rep chasing,” social media taunts and geographic feuding among kids that live in different parts of Wilmington.
The trial included hundreds of pieces of evidence, many of which were the defendants’ own text messages and social media posts. Those posts included the men posing with handguns investigators said were murder weapons and mocking their victims with posts like one that was a screenshot of paramedics trying to save Henry’s life that included the caption, “He got stretched like ah limo out there.”
Wharton said he was struck by how “utterly pointless” the shootings were singling out the “irony” of one piece of evidence from the trial, a picture taken from inside a local prison. The picture showed a bed and the words “North Pak rules 302” on it.
“Not only does NorthPak not rule 302 from a cell, but the person that wrote it does not even rule their own life,” Wharton said.
INDICTMENT: At least 6 killings linked to sweeping Wilmington-area gang indictment that left 14 charged
Coffield declined to speak at the hearing and told Wharton he had not thought about what he was going to do with his life in prison. Wharton asked Wing the same question.
“Make it out,” Wing replied before criticizing how the court handled his case.
Wharton told him that he will sometime realize that his “bravado” was “pointless.”
“We will see what the Supreme Court has to say about that,” Wing said, apparently referencing post-conviction appeals.
Separately, Markel Richards, 21, was sentenced to 21 years in prison tied to his guilty manslaughter plea for acting as the getaway driver in the Hamilton killing. Richards also pleaded guilty to multiple car thefts, nonfatal shootings and gang participation. Richards also did not address the court.
Wharton told Richards he was “just as guilty as the people who shot Hamilton,” but that he will have a shot at seeing the outside once again and that he should see his arrest as a “silver lining” because he was on course not to live to 25 years old.
“You are going to have some time to think about what you are going to do,” Wharton told him.
Contact Xerxes Wilson at (302) 324-2787 or xwilson@delawareonline.com.
