Columbus, Mississippi Vice Lord Sentenced to Statutory Maximum

OXFORD – On September 13, 2018, Darmarcus Fisher, a Vice Lord gang member in Columbus, Mississippi, was sentenced to the statutory maximum of ten years in federal prison for his role in two gang-related shootings, which occurred on March 7, 2016. The melee left one gang member hospitalized and resulted in bullets striking a bystander’s vehicle and residence.

Fisher previously pled guilty to being a felon in possession of ammunition, which was discharged from a firearm in March of 2016. On Thursday, Fisher was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Michael P. Mills in the Northern Judicial District of Mississippi to ten (10) years imprisonment. Fisher’s incarceration will be followed by three years of supervised release.

The sentencing was the culmination of a joint Federal and State investigation into multiple shootings in 2016, which occurred between rival gang members of the Vice Lords and the Black Gangster Disciples in Columbus, Mississippi. Multiple arrests have been made resulting in a substantial reduction in violent crime in Columbus, Mississippi.

 William C. Lamar, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Mississippi and Joseph Frank, Supervisory Special Agent for the Oxford Office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, made the announcement.

 “We are making our neighborhoods safe again by removing violent offenders from our communities.  Through the combined efforts of our Project Safe Neighborhoods Task Force and the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, federal, state, and local agents and officers will work together to make and keep our neighborhoods safe,” remarked U.S. Attorney Lamar.

These charges were the result of an investigation by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), a federal multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional task force that provides supplemental funding to federal and state agencies involved in the identification, investigation, and prosecution of violent organizations and pursuant to the Project Safe Neighborhoods anti-violent crime initiative. Several agencies were crucial to this investigation, including the ATF, the Columbus Police Department, the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Department, and the District Attorney’s Office for the Sixteenth Circuit Court of Mississippi. The government was represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Clyde McGee of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Oxford, Mississippi.