‘O Dog’ — reputed head of Goonie Boss gang — charged in seven killings

About four years ago, cops in the Englewood District were concerned that Romeo Blackman and his brother had targets on their backs.

Police were hearing rival gangs blamed the brothers for shootings on the South Side and wanted payback.

So the brothers were encouraged to get on a Greyhound bus and relocate to Minnesota, where relatives lived, according to police sources.

When the brothers weren’t around Englewood, violence dropped off around 72^nd Place and Laflin Street.

When they returned to the neighborhood, violence soared, according to police sources familiar with them.

Romeo Blackman, now 22, was regularly on a Top 10 police list of people suspected of violence in the Englewood District, the sources said.

On Friday, the feds charged him and four other reputed members of the Goonie Boss gang faction with racketeering and murder, saying in a news release that they “terrorized” Englewood.

Blackman, whose street name is “O Dog,” was the leader, prosecutors said. He was involved in seven killings between 2014 and 2016, the feds allege. His victims included a 25-year-old woman shot in a car and a father of five shot getting a haircut at a barbershop, according to an indictment unsealed Friday.

Blackman’s attorney, Christopher Grohman, said his client was declared by the government to be “death-penalty eligible” if convicted.

“All of the crimes alleged occurred when Mr. Blackman was 19 or younger,” Grohman said. “It is a sad day when our government stoops to the level of those they call criminals, and seeks to satisfy their baser instincts with an ‘eye for an eye.’”

In three of the slayings, Cook County prosecutors have separately charged another person with being the actual shooter.

The federal indictment — the result of an investigation by Chicago police and the FBI — says other Goonie Boss members were involved in three other murders over the same period.

Authorities say members of the gang celebrated on a video streamed on Facebook after a rival was killed in 2016.

Despite his fearsome reputation in Englewood, Blackman doesn’t appear to have been charged with a violent crime until now. In 2014, he was convicted of illegal gun possession, court records show.

He’s facing another criminal case in federal court alleging he and two other men smashed a stolen Jeep Wrangler into the South Post Guns store in Streator — about 100 miles west of Chicago — in June 2016.

They stole 18 handguns, along with a rifle and a shotgun, prosecutors said. Six of the guns were recovered, but none was linked to a violent crime, according to court records.

After the heist, the men allegedly went to a home in Streator where one of Blackman’s co-defendants lived and they posed with the guns in a video that was posted on Facebook, prosecutors say.

A few days later, according to a court filing by prosecutors, “One of the individuals from Streator, Illinois recruited to commit the burglary was found shot to death in the Englewood section of Chicago.”

Prosecutors also wrote: “The theft of the firearms and ammunition has contributed to the violence that plagued the Englewood neighborhood and the city of Chicago.”

A Sun-Times investigation last year found that Englewood street gangs have been involved in smash-and-grab thefts of guns across the Midwest.

Blackman’s co-defendants in the Streator burglary have been sentenced to federal prison. He’s awaiting trial.

In a separate federal case, Goonie Boss members are charged with using people without criminal records to buy at least nine guns in Michigan and transport them to Chicago.

The indictment made public Friday says Blackman was involved in the fatal shooting of Gerald Sias, 38, on May 27, 2016. Sias was killed at Powell’s Barber Shop in Englewood, which was featured in a scene in Spike Lee’s movie “Chi-Raq.”

The indictment also linked Blackman to the 2014 killings of Johnathon Johnson, 21; Alzonzo Williams, 24; Stanley Bobo, 18; and Krystal Jackson, 25; along with the 2015 killing of Andre Donner Jr., 26; and the 2016 killing of Davon Horace, 19.

Johnson was shot in the hallway of his apartment building; Jackson as she sat in a car outside a convenience store; and Williams, Bobo, Donner and Horace on the street.

The indictment doesn’t explain Blackman’s role in those slayings.

Reputed Goonie Boss member Nathaniel McElroy is also tied to the Sias killing, according to the indictment. And reputed Goonie Boss member Terrance Smith was allegedly involved in the Bobo and Jackson slayings.

Three other Goonie Boss members are charged in Cook County criminal court with carrying out murders allegedly linked to Blackman.

According to Cook County prosecutors, Kwonte Hughes opened fire on Bobo from a van; DeMarco Bennett jumped out of a vehicle and shot Donner; and Trevante Reed walked into Powell’s Barber Shop and shot Sias and a 36-year-old man in retaliation for the shooting of a fellow Goonie’s member.

Surveillance video showed Reed enter and exit the shop, Cook County prosecutors said in court Friday.

Reed is serving a three-year sentence in state prison for involuntary manslaughter in a horrific crash that left a woman dead and 12 people injured on the Far South Side in 2015.

He was fleeing from police in a stolen minivan when he slammed into a Dodge Caravan full of people, prosecutors say. Reed was 16 at the time.

Contributing: Matthew Hendrickson, Adam Thorp