A member of the street gang known as the International Robbing Crew pleaded guilty Tuesday to a kidnapping and two murders, the Fulton County District Attorney's Office announced. He was sentenced to three life terms in prison.
Daquan Stevens, 26, already serving life plus 75 years for another gang-related murder, was one of 12 IRC gang members initially named in a 60-count indictment that included eight murders, several armed robberies, kidnapping and tampering with evidence, authorities said. The gang, mostly evacuees from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit five years ago, was considered one of Atlanta’s most violent. IRC was credited with a spike in the city’s homicides in the two years after the group became established in Atlanta.
The district attorney's office provided accounts of the crimes.
Mamadous Barry’s murder was the first one Stevens admitted to committing.
Barry, an African businessman who operated a warehouse near West End, was found dead in his bathtub just before Thanksgiving in 2005. Barry, a business associate of Stevens’ father, interrupted Stevens and a partner while they were burglarizing his house. Barry was hog-tied, handcuffed, duct-taped, and suffocated with a plastic bag.
Stevens also pleaded guilty to murdering Ryan Harmon soon after he returned home from a tour in Iraq. The soldier was gunned down with an AK-47 assault rifle a few days after he and his friends got into a dispute with Stevens and other gang members outside an Atlanta nightclub. Early on the morning of April 13, 2006, Stevens spotted Harmon driving near the intersections of I-20 and Windsor and Spring Streets. Stevens admitted that he pulled behind the soldier’s SUV and fired 14 times, hitting Harmon twice.
Four months later, Stevens and another gang member kidnapped Gary Lester, a friend of other IRC members who had been gambling at “Tight Werks.” Stevens robbed Lester and then went to Lester's house in East Point, where he broke in, forced Lester’s girlfriend to strip and took things from the house.
Stevens and his partner later tried to suffocate Lester with a plastic bag, but Lester broke free from his handcuffs and escaped. Stevens tried to shoot him as he ran off, but the gun jammed. Stevens decided it was an “act of God” that Lester escaped death twice and he let him go.
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