They were ordered to carry guns, knives and hammers, and were involved in shootings, stabbings and a plan to blow up a rival gang with a pipe bomb, according to the indictment.


Eighteen alleged gang members, seven from the Chicago area, were charged in a sweeping racketeering indictment handed down by a federal grand jury in St. Louis on June 9. Other alleged gang members were from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri, Colorado, Wisconsin and Kentucky.







Among the alleged members from Chicago is Anthony Robinson, 24, who is charged with committing a murder as part of the criminal conspiracy. According to the indictment, Robinson, a "regional enforcer" in the gang, fatally shot a man during a Jan. 2 melee with members of a rival gang.


The shooting occurred at a motorcycle club in the West Chatham neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. Two men, Bryant Glass, 39, and Emmit Suddoth, 38, were killed in the shooting — the indictment did not make it clear which slaying Robinson is charged with.


Allan Hunter, 33, of Wheaton, is charged in the indictment with conspiracy to commit murder for taking part in an alleged plan in February to take out members of a rival Chicago motorcycle gang with a pipe bomb. The bombing never took place, according to the indictment.


Hunter took over as the Wheel of Soul's Midwest region president after Myron Farris, 38, was shot and killed in his garage on the West Side in July, 2010, according to the indictment.


Hunter also is accused in a January plot to murder members of a rival gang in East St. Louis, Ill., and, with Robinson, of attempted murder in connection with a March shooting in Ohio. Robinson is also charged with murder in that shooting.


The other Chicago members charged are Maurice Thomas, 31; Toney Sims, 39; Thomas Bailey, 41; Carlyle Fleming, 32: and Bryant Palmer, 51. All are charged with racketeering. Thomas, Sims, Bailey and Palmer are also charged with drug offenses.


Fleming is charged with attempted murder as part of the conspiracy in the August 2009 shooting of a man identified in the indictment only as R.T. in a Chicago club called the Howling Moon.


In a separate indictment that came out of the same investigation, two Chicago-area men were charged with firearms offenses.