Javion Bush, Obstruction of Justice, Illinois 2021

CHICAGO – A member of a Chicago street gang has been sent to the slammer for retaliating against two witnesses who were cooperating with the government in a criminal investigation into the gang’s activities.

Javion Bush, 23, pleaded guilty to an obstruction of justice charge earlier this year. Bush admitted in a plea agreement that in 2021 he posted an image on Facebook that named the two cooperating individuals and contained a note stating, “All rats must di (sic).” Bush tagged the Facebook accounts of the cooperators in his posting. Bush also threatened one of the cooperators in a direct communication to him on Facebook Messenger, stating, “All rats must die.”

The two cooperators had previously testified before a federal grand jury that was investigating a Chicago street gang faction known as the Goonie Boss/Goonie Gang, of which Bush was a member. Bush learned the identities of the cooperators after viewing a law enforcement report that had been provided to another Goonie member who was being prosecuted by the State of Illinois for murder.

The federal investigation of the Goonie gang spanned several years and resulted in the convictions of numerous members and associates, including three Goonie leaders who were convicted this summer of racketeering conspiracy. The jury in that trial found that members of the gang were liable for six murders while terrorizing the Englewood neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side.

U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey sentenced Bush on Aug. 30, 2023, after a hearing in federal court in Chicago. The sentence was announced by Morris Pasqual, Acting United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Robert W. “Wes” Wheeler, Jr., Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Field Office of the FBI, and Fred Waller, Interim Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department.

“Without witnesses, the truth about an incident will never be found,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Albert Berry III argued in the government’s sentencing memorandum. “Witnesses should be protected at all costs and threatening them should be sanctioned swiftly and severely.”

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