Asbury Park gang execution sentences 'a huge slap on the wrist,' victim's mother says

FREEHOLD Vicki Scott was getting ready for bed on Thanksgiving Eve 2017 when her phone rang at 10:35 p.m.

"Your son, Denzel, is dead,'' the female caller told her.

"I was out of my mind, hysterically crying, yelling, in disbelief and pure shock,'' Scott told a judge on Friday.

Just earlier that day, Scott said she spoke with her son, warning him not be late for Thanksgiving dinner the next day. Then, she said she learned he was "literally gunned down like an animal.''

She told Superior Court Judge Joseph W. Oxley that the men responsible for her son's death do not themselves deserve to live.

"My true feeling? A life for a life,'' Scott told the judge at the sentencing hearings for Vernon Sanders and Avery Hopes.

She called the punishment the pair was about to receive "a huge slap on the wrist.''

Sanders, 39, of Brick, who pleaded guilty in December to aggravated manslaughter in the gang execution in Asbury Park of Denzel Morgan-Hicks, was sentenced to 16 years in state prison.

Hopes, 28, of Asbury Park, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. In August, he pleaded guilty to attempting to murder Morgan-Hicks.

Oxley, in imposing the sentences, was abiding by terms in each of the defendant's plea agreements.

The plea agreements were reached with the state after the two defendants stood trial together last year on murder charges, and the trial ended in a mistrial.

Morgan-Hicks, 27, of Barnegat and formerly of Asbury Park, died in a hail of gunfire when he returned to his sport-utility vehicle after visiting friends in an apartment on Prospect Avenue in Asbury Park on Nov. 22, 2017.

Both Sanders and Hopes, in entering their guilty pleas, admitted firing multiple shots at Morgan-Hicks that night.

Sanders was right up on the victim, riddling him with bullets and causing his death, Matthew Bogner, assistant Monmouth County prosecutor, noted at the sentencing hearing. The bullets fired by Hopes from a distance on the passenger side of the victim's vehicle, however,  all missed, Bogner said.

The motive for the killing was revenge, he said.

During the trial last year before Superior Court Judge Jill Grace O'Malley, codefendants who turned state's evidence testified that Sanders, a leader in the Double I set of the Bloods street gang in Asbury Park, believed that Morgan-Hicks, a member of the rival Crips gang, was responsible for the shooting death six years earlier in Neptune of a fellow Double I member. That was despite the fact that Morgan-Hicks had never been charged in the death on May 27, 2011, of Edric Gordon, 21, of Neptune.

One of the cooperating codefendants, Steven Taylor, testified that the Bloods began planning to take revenge on Morgan-Hicks when he came out of prison during the summer of 2017, after serving five years for a weapons offense.

Steven Taylor told the jury that he summoned Sanders to Prospect Avenue when he spotted Morgan-Hicks there on Thanksgiving Eve 2017, and he told his brother, Michael, also a cooperating codefendant, to call Hopes and tell him to bring a gun.

Bogner said Hopes, who was a member of a different set of the Bloods, wasn't motivated by vengeance. Instead, he was looking to impress the older gang members and gain what is termed as "stain'' in the world of street gangs.

Hopes' attorney, Paul Zager, turned to the victim's mother and expressed the senselessness of his client's crime.

"My client had no beef whatsoever with your son, which makes this ridiculous,'' Zager told Scott.

After weeks of testimony that highlighted the inner workings of street gangs in Asbury Park, O'Malley declared a mistrial after one of the jurors alleged she was being bullied by the other jurors. However, a number of the other jurors vehemently denied that allegation in interviews with the Asbury Park Press and claimed that the one juror simply refused to deliberate.

Sanders and Hopes were slated to be tried separately after the mistrial, until both eventually reached plea agreements with the state.

Bogner, defense attorneys and the judge all agreed the killing was tied to organized gang activity.

Zager, a criminal defense attorney in Monmouth County for 38 years, said he's seen more than his share of tragedy stemming from gang activity on the west side of Asbury Park. He called it "an inconvenient truth'' that nothing will change until the socioeconomic issues in that area are addressed. Until young people are given better opportunities, the gang violence will persist, Zager said.

"I'm not ready to blame Asbury Park,'' the judge responded, saying he knows of many success stories out of the city.

"These are personal choices that are made,'' Oxley said. "They're making bad decisions.''

Scott, in describing her dead son for the judge, mentioned nothing about a gang affiliation.

In her victim impact statement, she described her son as kind, caring, thoughtful, loving and fiercely protective of her.

He had training as an electrician's apprentice and was dreaming of becoming an engineer, Scott told the judge.

Scott, her sister and others accompanying them stormed out of the courtroom as Sanders told the judge he hopes to have opportunities to earn college credits and receive other training while he is serving his prison term.

In the absence of Morgan-Hicks' family members, Sanders went on to express remorse.

"I consider myself a leader,'' Sanders said. "But, Nov. 22, 2017, I failed in the opportunity to say no, and I didn't. I was wrong and I caused pain that I shouldn't have caused to a mother.''

He also said he wanted to prepare himself in prison "for when I do come home so I don't have to come in another courtroom again.''

Hopes declined to address the court before he was sentenced.

Scott and her family members returned to the courtroom to learn the pair's punishment.

Both defendants will have to serve 85 percent of their prison terms before they can be considered for release on parole, under the state's No Early Release Act, Oxley said. Both also will be under parole supervision for five years once they are released from prison, he said.

Both defendants were given credit toward their prison sentences for the more than five years they have spent behind bars awaiting disposition of the case.

Kathleen Hopkins, a reporter in New Jersey since 1985, covers crime, court cases, legal issues and just about every major murder trial to hit Monmouth and Ocean counties. Contact her at khopkins@app.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Asbury Park gangsters sentenced to prison in revenge execution