LUKACHUKAI, Ariz. — The FBI says a "highly organized and extremely violent" gang led by a mother-son team in Lukachukai has been dismantled after a murder in 2014 triggered a larger investigation.
According to the FBI, Mike Caputo with the FBI's Phoenix office said the gang, which called themselves the Red Skin Kingz, was "one of the most violent gangs we have ever seen” on a reservation.
FBI said RSK operated from Lukachukai, a remote town in northern Arizona. It was there that 28-year-old Devan Leonard and his 48-year-old mother, Lucille Leonard, the gang's leaders, ran a legitimate business.
The gang primarily sold cocaine and meth, the FBI said.
According to a release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona, RSK was "responsible for at least three murders, attempted murder, aggravated assaults, carjacking, kidnappings, sexual assaults, and drug trafficking, amongst other crimes."
In May, Devan Leonard was sentenced to 50 years in prison. His mother was sentenced to 10 years and another gang member, 26-year-old Kyle Gray, was sentenced to 30 years.
"In a rare occurrence," the FBI wrote, "the three were charged with racketeering offenses typically reserved for the Mafia and other highly structured criminal groups."
According to the FBI, a murder in 2014 near Wheatfields Lake, Arizona eventually brought the gang down.
The FBI writes:
On December 16, 2014, Gray and Devan Leonard shot and killed a Gallup man after a drug deal in nearby Wheatfields Lake, Arizona. Then they took the victim to a remote camp on the Navajo Nation, where they dismembered and burned the body—and forced the victim’s girlfriend to watch.
A U.S. Attorney’s Office release said Lucille Leonard mostly participated in and oversaw RSK’s drug trafficking, not the gang's violent activities.
The investigation resulted in eight RSK members being indicted and pleading guilty, according to the FBI.
“We dismantled the gang,” Special Agent Bradley Smith said in a FBI release. “We put a complete stop to their activities.”
