Crip pleads, prosecutors take aim at gangs

STAUNTON — Fearing a setup, a Crip fired a high-powered rifle into a Stuarts Draft home and now faces a half-century in prison as prosecutors carry out a get-tough approach on gangs.

James Edward Breckenridge, 24, of Stuarts Draft, pleaded guilty Friday in Augusta County Circuit Court to attempted first-degree murder, gang participation and firearms charges in drive-by shootings that left two homes riddled with bullet holes. Jesse James Purcell, 19, of Sherando, allegedly a Crip accomplice, also shot an AK-47 into homes, authorities said.

Prosecutors refused to let Breckenridge plead to lesser charges, partly in an effort to send a message to gang members, said Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Robin Boylan. Breckenridge admitted to belonging to the Crips, one of the America’s most violent street gangs whose tentacles have spread to almost every corner of the country.

“We take this extremely seriously,” Boylan said after the plea hearing.

Skeptical about someone who approached him seeking marijuana, Breckenridge conspired with Purcell in November to eliminate their fears, authorities said.

“Breckenridge was concerned that this was a setup,” a court document states. “And he and Purcell decided to go by the person’s house and shoot it up.”

Authorities said the fears of a setup were unfounded.

The two men, along with Purcell’s girlfriend, Logan Taylor, piled into a car and eased past a home in the 300 block of Howardsville Turnpike with the loaded AK-47, said Assistant Attorney General Phil Figura. Purcell lowered the weapon out the window and opened fire, authorities said.

Bullets pierced the house in multiple locations. One shot buzzed just inches above the head of a sleeping woman, the grandmother of the person who approached Breckenridge and Purcell for drugs, authorities said.

“Purcell reloaded, Breckenridge wanted to fire the weapon itself,” the court document states. “They then went to another house…and Breckenridge pulled the trigger on that house.”

A woman in the second home, in the 100 block of Cold Springs Road, told authorities she was awakened by a strange noise and went outside to investigate.

“[She] discovered that a gutter had been shot off and there were bullet holes in the residence,” records state.

Figura said authorities don’t know why the pair shot at the second home.

“They had been drinking,” he said. “They could have thought it was the same house because it looks the same.”

After the second shooting, Purcell, Breckenridge and Logan went to the 200 block of Cider Barn Road where they met with acquaintances, authorities said. Wearing blue bandanas, a symbol of the Crips gang, they woke up the others and explained what they did, authorities said.

“As they went in, Purcell demonstrated a Crips war cry,” records state. “Taylor was brought in at gunpoint and was warned not to tell. Purcell and Breckenridge both indicated that they wished that they had killed the [expletive].”

Sitting next to Figura at the hearing, Boylan assisted with the prosecution. Boylan said Breckenridge faces a maximum sentence of 58 years on his seven charges.

“We take a very serious view of gang activity in Augusta County,” Boylan said. “The policy of this office is that we will go after these gang cases as vigorously as we can. Gangs pose a potentially devastating effect to a community.”

Boylan said Augusta County Commonwealth’s Attorney Lee Ervin wants his office to be “actively involved in gang prosecution.” That’s one of the reasons Boylan sat alongside Figura, who has prosecuted other area gang cases.

Figura said this wasn’t his first run-in with Breckenridge. In 2006, Staunton authorities arrested him on narcotics charges during “Operation Vampire,” which targeted gang members and associates.

“Part of the terms of his probation was that he was not to associate with any known gang members,” Figura said. “Of course, Jesse Purcell is. He hadn’t been on the radar screen for a long time until this.”

Purcell has been charged with gang participation and awaits an August jury trial.

The specter of gang violence in Augusta first surfaced in 2003, when Crips killed Christopher S. Kennedy, 19, at Braley Pond in the western section of the county. That killing is referenced in court records in the Breckenridge case.

After Kennedy’s killing, former Attorney General Jerry Kilgore placed Augusta County Sheriff Randy Fisher on an anti-gang task force.

Through the years, the task force evolved and transformed into today’s two-person anti-gang department that operates around the clock to map, follow, detect and learn about local gangs, authorities said.

In 2007, authorities handled another gang flare-up, in which a group of Bloods members broke into a Waynesboro house and shot Crip James G. O’Brien five times, Figura said. In that case, Judge Humes J. Franklin Jr. sentenced each gangster to 43 years in prison and declared, “I simply will not tolerate gang activity.”

Though gang members have been convicted of crimes across the area, it’s rare that prosecutors can prove a crime was committed as part of a gang’s agenda, authorities said.

Purcell and Breckenridge each face one count of use of a firearm in commission of a felony; two counts of shooting into an occupied building; one count of nonviolent possession of a firearm by a convicted felon; one count of attempted first-degree murder; one count of conspiring to shoot into an occupied dwelling; and one count of participating in criminal gang activity.

Figura chuckled at Breckenridge’s fears of a setup.

“He didn’t work with the task force,” the prosecutor said of the target in the shooting. “So that’s how paranoid they were.”