A jury convicted a Gary man Friday in a revenge slaying.
Martell Flippins, 36, of Chicago, was found guilty of murder and a gun enhancement in 24-year-old Pierre Patterson’s March 12, 2023 death around 3:15 a.m. near 50th Avenue and Broadway. He could face up to 85 years.
Jurors deliberated for about 2 1/2 hours on the murder verdict. His sentencing is Aug. 16.
Authorities allege Flippins was one of two shooters who gunned him down in the middle of Broadway after Patterson allegedly shot Flippins’ brother dead at a Calumet Township club a year earlier.
His defense lawyers argued it was a circumstantial case and prosecutors never proved he was in the SUV or fired a gun from the vehicle.
In closing arguments, Deputy Prosecutor Keith Anderson said Flippins’ green Chevrolet Equinox and cell phone were at the murder scene.
Flippins later sent coded letters to a woman asking her to get a story straight for him and reach out to a relative to also back up his alibi. What helped the prosecution’s case was another letter Flippins sent her where he appeared to acknowledge that “things are not looking good for him,” Anderson said.
He had the motive, the prosecutor said.
Patterson was a “known suspect” in the March 6, 2022 death of Lavell “Big Slab” Hughes, 26, in front of “many witnesses” at Trendsetters Bar in Calumet Township. Prosecutors said Monday they were close to charging Patterson when he was killed.
“I knew (he) was hit. He was crawling all onna floor when I look back,” Patterson appeared to write in a Jan. 28, 2023 Facebook post.
“I swear, I’m gonna cut (his) head off,” Flippins appeared to write in January 2023, according to Anderson.
Flippins was texting with multiple people in the vehicle as he tracked Patterson before he died, Anderson said. One was “Baby Blitz”, a man they never identified. Several hours later, “Baby Blitz” sent Flippins a cell phone video showing police surrounding Patterson’s body at the scene.
Anderson said he believed “Baby Blitz” was the other shooter.
Another person Flippins was texting was the same woman he asked to back up his alibi, showing they weren’t together when it happened, Anderson said.
Even if the other man’s bullets — who likely had the automatic weapon in the backseat — was more to blame, Flippins was “just as guilty” under Indiana’s accomplice liability laws, he said.
Defense lawyer Marc Laterzo told jurors “probably” wouldn’t carry prosecutors to a guilty verdict.
Patterson’s Facebook post was public for all Hughes’ friends and family to see, including some who might have been at the club when he was “gunned down in cold blood,” the lawyer argued.
Once investigators got to Flippins, “they just kinda stopped there,” he said.
The SUV on various videos appeared “similar,” but prosecutors couldn’t prove it was the same vehicle.
They also wanted jurors to believe a shell casing was stuck under a windshield wiper for two weeks, through a car wash, and stayed there, he said.
An expert said it matched two casings found at the murder scene. He couldn’t say the specific “characteristics.”
The woman, who Flippins asked to back him up, testified. She said she last saw him around 11:30 p.m., then later the next morning.
“You should not totally rule out her testimony,” Laterzo said.
The text thread — where Flippins messaged various people as he appeared to track Patterson — was “subject to interpretation,” the lawyer said.
The cell phone data maps that showed his tracked his cell signals covered a “large area” of Gary. All it showed was Flippins might have been in the area, he said. There was “not one bit of evidence” that Flippins drove the SUV, or fired a gun.
The cell phone video that “Baby Blitz” sent didn’t mean he was involved or filmed it, the lawyer said. It was a “tragic” chain of events where two people ended up dead. There could have been another reason to send a video someone else forwarded.
Such as — “Look, Pierre Patterson met the same end as your brother,” Laterzo said.
The affidavit alleges Flippins’ green SUV was parked for 1 1/2 hours in a bar parking lot, before he drove around to “ambush” and shoot Patterson.
He was walking across Broadway on March 12, 2023, to Fatso’s bar — the former Voodoo Lounge — at 5060 Broadway, when the gunfire erupted from the SUV. Patterson appeared knocked backward, according to security videos.
Patterson was a “self-admitted” gang member with the 49th Avenue Boys in Gary, the affidavit alleges.
“Not one day goes by without me shedding tears ever since I got the call … can’t wait to make (expletive) feel the way I do,” Flippins wrote on Facebook on April 21, 2022, after Hughes’ death.
