A neck tattoo and an associate with a GPS ankle monitor factored heavily in a judge’s decision Wednesday to send a 30 Deep gang member back to prison for five years for violating his probation.
“Every way you could, you flipped the bird at the system since you’ve gotten out,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney told Johnquavious Hood, 21, who is alleged to have fired the head shot that killed a popular Grant Park bartender in December 2009. Prosecutors say they lack the physical evidence to charge Hood with John Henderson’s death.
But there was ample evidence — much of it supplied, inadvertently, by Hood — that he had violated his probation on 2011 burglary and gang charges unrelated to the Standard Food and Spirits shooting.
Atlanta police officer Lakea Gaither testified that surveillance footage taken from a Cobb County liquor store on Jan. 15 showed the avowed gangster participating in a smash-and-grab gone awry. Hood was shot in the side by the owner of the Vinings Bottle Shop and was spotted 20 minutes later at Grady Memorial Hospital seeking treatment for his wound.
He was accompanied by another suspect in the smash-and-grab, who was traced to the liquor store and to Grady via the GPS ankle monitor he was wearing, Gaither said. Cobb police have secured an arrest warrant for Hood and the associate.
Hood claimed he was shot on Ralph David Abernathy but provided few details to police.
“I’m not going to reveal who shot me because my life is already in danger,” Hood told the court Wednesday. “Yeah, I had a gun on the street. People are trying to kill me every day.”
Hood was released from the Georgia State Prison in Reidsville on Dec. 14 and had six years and seven months left in his sentence.
“A month and a few days later after he gets out of custody for three years, he is at it again,” Fulton deputy district attorney Gabe Banks said. “He is a danger to the community. Without custody, he is going to re-offend.”
Hood told the judge he is no longer a gang member but had no explanation for photographs posted on Facebook and Instagram of him with other 30 Deep members. A neck tattoo he received while in prison was evident in the pictures, confirming he had violated another condition of his probation preventing him from associating with the gang.
Probation officer Marissa Viverito testified that Hood told her, “This is my lifestyle. This is where I hang out.”
“If undercovers jump out on me, I have enough guns to take them out,” he’s alleged to have said.
Hood also failed a drug test and, according to Viverito, tried to clean his urine sample with a hand sanitizer.
His reunion with 30 Deep came as a surprise to many who followed his alleged involvement in the Standard shooting. Hood told police in a videotaped interrogation that Jonathan Redding killed John Henderson, though he changed his story on the witness stand.
Redding, who was 17 at the time, was eventually charged under a law that allows a jury to convict a defendant for murder if he participated in an armed robbery that resulted in a death. He was convicted and sentenced to life plus 20 years in March 2011 for his role in the shooting.
“Now the district attorney has five more years to secure testimony to Hood’s participation in the Standard shooting,” Don Henderson, father of John Henderson, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Wednesday.
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