Gorilla Stone Mafia head John Pena was losing a gang war against their hated rivals on Staten Island and facing the prospect of a mutiny, so he used revenge and murder to solve his leadership crisis, according to the feds.
Pena, 32, who goes by the nickname “Tragedy,” is on trial in Brooklyn Federal Court for racketeering and murder, accused of killing two rivals to keep his grip on the Bloods-affiliated street gang.
“The gang valued violence the most,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Elias Laris told the jury in his opening argument Wednesday. “Since 2019, GSM [Gorilla Stone Mafia] has been at war with a rival gang. … As GSM’s leader, the defendant was losing control. GSM was losing the war.”
That war, according to court documents, was between the Stapleton-based Gorilla Stone Mafia and the “Bugatti,” another gang operating out of Staten Island’s Mariners Harbor neighborhood.
AP Photo/Seth Wenig
Stapleton Houses low-income housing complex in Staten Island on Wednesday, June 8, 2016. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Three of Pena’s fellow Gorilla Stone Mafia were rubbed out between December 2019 and April 2020, including one of Pena’s relatives, and the gang believed Bugatti was responsible, prosecutors said.
When two members of Pena’s gang switched to the winning team, Pena had to answer that betrayal with blood, Laris said.
“He reached a tipping point. He had to get revenge,” the prosecutor said.
Pena’s first target was Mark Bajandas, 26, who went by the nickname of “Drama,” the prosecutor said.
Bajandas’ former cohorts lured him back to their turf, the Stapleton Houses, for a memorial service for a slain Gorilla Stone Mafia member, the feds allege.
“They told him it was safe to come. They told him not to bring a gun,” Laris said.
But those assurances were a lie, and Tragedy made sure Drama wouldn’t come back alive, according to Laris.
Pena shot him more than 10 times on March 10, 2021, then calmly walked away as he bled out, the prosecutor said.
Three months later, he executed another rival, a former Gorilla Stone Mafia member named Francisco Gonzalez, who was ejected from the gang and designated to be killed “on sight” after a 2017 drug dispute, according to the feds.
Gonzalez was dating Pena’s ex-girlfriend, and on June 22, 2021, as Gonzalez slept in her bed, Pena broke in, walked up to his rival and shot him three times in the head, Laris said.
Laris said the jury will see video surveillance showing the defendant at the scene of each murder — including a few feet away from Bajandas before his shooting, and walking away after. The feds also plan to present a 911 caller they say IDs Pena as Bajandas’ killer.
Prosecutors also hope to call a cooperating witness who left the Gorilla Stone Mafia to join a rival gang, and to present handwritten notes and videos of Pena boasting about the killings.
Two years later he rapped about it with this line, “left his brains on them sheets, man what was he thinkin?” according to court filings by prosecutors,
Pena’s lawyer, Sam Gregory, argued that the case against his client is hardly open-and-shut. He cast doubt on the 911 caller witness. and mentioned the name of several other possible suspects who were in the area of the murders.
“There is a ton of video in this case,” Gregory said. “There is no video of the murder of Mark Bajandas. There’s video before. There’s video after, and there’s video of the surrounding area.”
The 911 caller, Gregory said, offered a conflicting description of the shooter and what he was wearing when he spoke to detectives.
“He wants to be involved in the case and thinks he knows what happened. He didn’t witness the shooting, Gregory said.
“This case is not as strong as they’re cracking it up to be,” he added.
After the opening arguments, the jury heard from Bajandas’ mother, Nydia Lasanta, 49, who described him as a “loving, funny, always joking kid, a happy kid.”
He was friends with Pena for years, and they’d call each other “Twin,” but that changed after he returned from prison in late 2020 after serving time for a gun charge, she said.
Once, she said, while she was driving him through the Bronx, where she lived, he pulled his hoodie over his head and started acting nervously.
“He told me to drive faster,” she said. After he got to her apartment, he started pacing nervously and said, “I’ve gotta get out of here.”
“Trag, he’s got his people out here,” he explained to her, referring to Pena’s nickname, Tragedy.
The trial continues Thursday.
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