New York Daily News
Feb 18, 2020 5:42 PM
Star Brim and Cardi B attend Missy Elliott’s MTV Video Music Awards after-party in August 2019 in New York City. (Craig Barritt/Getty Images for Courvoisier® C)
The pregnant best friend of Bronx rapper Cardi B was among nearly a dozen alleged members of a Bloods gang subset indicted Tuesday on a sweeping number of violence and conspiracy charges.
Federal prosecutors said Yonette Respass, known in rap and gang circles as Star Brim, is the highest-ranking female member of the 5-9 Brims, a Bloods offshoot behind vengeful bar attacks that landed Cardi B in legal trouble.
Despite being in jail at the time, Respass ordered and orchestrated a violent assault against bartenders at Angels, a Queens strip club, in August 2018 because 5-9 Brims members believed the bartenders had disrespected another member of the gang, officials said.
From jail, she told allegedly associates to “pop that bottle” on the bartenders.
“I want hands put on them,” she said, according to prosecutors. “I don’t even want no talking.”
Photos of guns allegedly owned by 5-9 Brims, a Bloods offshoot, were put into evidence by the NYPD.
Dissatisfied with the first attack, which was videotaped by a member of the gang, Respass ordered a second assault at the College Point strip club, in which Cardi B was charged with trying to join in on the beatdown.
Cardi, who was charged by Queens cops at the time and has pleaded innocent, was not charged in the new federal case. She spent much of the weekend in Chicago at the NBA All-Star Game.
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But Cardi’s support for Respass has been uncompromising. In 2018, after Respass was arrested, the Bronx-bred entertainer posted a message of support on Instagram.
“I’m so proud of her,” Cardi, whose real name is Belcalis Almanzar, posted. “I seen her growth and I see how responsible and determined she is.”
Although she was named in the federal indictment, Respass was not immediately arrested because she is due to give birth any day. Prosecutors said they are in discussions with her attorney about a surrender date.
Also arrested in the roundup was Willie Evans, who is charged with two counts of murder as well as racketeering, weapons possession and conspiracy. Charged, too, with murder was Marvin Pippins, who murdered a rival gang member in the middle of a Brooklyn street, according to the indictment.
Pippins was also charged with racketeering conspiracy, narcotics conspiracy and use of a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking crime.
The indictment also revealed evidence seized from cell phones and social media accounts, including pictures of menacing firearms, one of which was a semiautomatic pistol with a magazine capable of holding 50 rounds of .40-caliber ammunition.
