He was new to Erie. He’s now headed to state prison for being the victim of a shooting during a “hunt” for a teenager.

Jamaica A. Boyd had only been in Erie for about a year when he participated in two gang-related shootings two days apart in February 2023.

He helped spray 15 to 20 rounds at a house at West Second and Poplar streets on the night of February 6, 2023.

And he provided the gun that one of his four co-defendants used when a 14-year-old boy was shot in the neck during a drive-by shooting near West 29th and Cherry streets on the afternoon of February 8, 2023.

Both times, police and prosecutors said, Boyd and his co-defendants missed their target: a 15-year-old boy linked to a rival street gang.

Boyd, 21, had moved from Memphis to Erie to live with relatives. The incidents forced him to move once again.

He was sentenced to six to 12 years in prison for both shootings.

The Erie County District Attorney’s Office and the defense recommended the sentence in light of Boyd’s guilty plea in January to four counts of attempted homicide and carrying a firearm without a license while of the Cherry Street shooting and aggravated assault and discharge of a firearm into an occupied structure in the Poplar Street shooting.

Erie County Judge John J. Mead followed the recommendation when he sentenced Boyd on Friday.

Mead called the shootings “very disturbing” and another example of “young people chasing young people all over the city.”

Boyd said he took responsibility.

“I’m not a bad person,” he told Mead via video conference from the Erie County Jail. “I just happened to be with the wrong crowd at the wrong time.”

Two rival gangs, two shootings in Erie

Boyd got involved with the wrong crowd shortly after arriving in Erie. His attorney, Bruce Sandmeyer, said Boyd moved to Erie from Memphis about a year before the shooting.

The members of the crowd were gang members.

Boyd and his four co-defendants were linked to the 2-5, a gang in the East 25th and German Streets area, according to information presented in court by Assistant Attorney General Jeremy Lightner on Friday and in earlier court proceedings.

Lightner said the 15-year-old boy who was the target of both shootings was affiliated with Pop Block, a gang in the Poplar Street neighborhood.

The main defendant in both shootings is Kremeer K. Thompson, who was 17 at the time and charged as an adult.

Police said Thompson was armed with an assault rifle when he and Boyd shot at the Poplar Street home around 8:45 p.m. on Feb. 6, and police said Thompson used a caliber handgun .357 from Boyd to shoot 14. 12-year-old boy at West 29th and Cherry streets around 4:35 p.m. on February 8.

The gun was fired from an SUV driving through the neighborhood, just north of Erie High School. Boyd, Thompson and two other co-defendants – Anfernee K. Graves and Elijah R. Ward – were in the SUV Graves was driving, police said.

The 14-year-old was hospitalized and recovered, Lightner said. He said Thompson intended to shoot the 15-year-old.

A group of people in the neighborhood fought back at the SUV. Those shootings led police to charge two other people: Orguna L. Sanders Jr., 21, who was granted probation, and a defendant who was prosecuted as a juvenile.

In the Poplar Street case, the house sprayed with gunfire was next to the residence of the 15-year-old target, police said.

The bullets pierced the windows, walls, paneling and doors of the house, one of the residents testified during the preliminary hearing in the two shooting cases, in May 2023. He said the shooting looked like to a war zone.

Two co-defendants also pleaded guilty and sentenced

Thompson, now 19, pleaded guilty in January to attempted homicide, aggravated assault and other charges related to the shooting. He pleaded guilty to intimidating a witness, for contacting the 14-year-old victim to try to get her to lie about what had happened.

Mead followed another recommended sentence and sentenced Thompson to 10 1/2 to 30 years in state prison in March.

Thompson, Boyd and two other co-defendants – Graves and Ward – were charged in both shootings. Another co-defendant was only charged in the Poplar Street case.

That defendant is 22-year-old Saron D. Tate. He pleaded guilty in January to conspiracy to discharge a firearm into an occupied structure, and Mead immediately sentenced him to 11½ to 23 months in the Erie County Jail and two years of probation, according to the court. records.

Graves and Ward, both 22, testified for the prosecution during the preliminary hearing in the May 2023 shooting. They are both awaiting trial while incarcerated on bond.

With Boyd’s conviction, the main co-defendants in the shooting were sentenced to prison.

As Lightner told the court Friday, the shooters fired the bullets in both cases for the same reason: Boyd, the newcomer to Erie, joined Thompson and the others in “trying to chase a boy from 15 years that had upset them.” “.

Contact Ed Palattella at epalattella@timesnews.com or 814-881-0238. Follow him on @ETNpalattella.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Erie newcomer sentenced in two gang-related shootings within days of each other