DOJ Seal

Department of Justice

U.S. Attorney's Office
Middle District of Tennessee

For Immediate Release

Thursday, March 22, 2018
Donald Q. Cochran
, United States Attorney
Contact: David Boling

Nashville Man Responsible for Multiple Acts of Violent Crime in Public Housing Areas Pleads Guilty to Federal Firearms Charges

Plea Agreement Calls for 35-Year Prison Sentence

Nashville, Tenn. – March 22, 2018 – A Nashville, Tennessee man at the heart of violent crime activity in the J.C. Napier and Tony Sudekum Public Housing neighborhoods pleaded guilty yesterday in U.S. District Court to brandishing and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence, announced U.S. Attorney Don Cochran of the Middle District of Tennessee.

           

Aweis Haji-Mohamed, a/k/a Son Son, 28, was indicted in July 2016, and charged with a variety of federal firearms offenses relating to his involvement in an on-going violent crime wave, including armed robberies and murders.  Haji-Mohamed was one of 36 individuals charged by July 2016, as a result of a targeted investigation by local and federal law enforcement, which began in March 2015 as a response to violent crime in certain Public Housing Developments.

 

Among other crimes, Haji-Mohamed was charged with and admitted to planning and committing an armed robbery of a street level cocaine dealer in the Tony Sudekum neighborhood in January 2015.  During this robbery, Haji-Mohamed fired a .40 caliber semi-automatic pistol at the stepson of the man he was robbing, when the stepson stepped out of his apartment to find out what the commotion was.

           

Haji-Mohamed admitted that he also planned and robbed another cocaine dealer named Isaiah Starks, in the Tony Sudekum area in January 2015.  During this robbery, Haji-Mohamed fired a shot into the ground from a .40 caliber handgun, as another individual held a gun on Starks and other occupants of his vehicle.  In the early morning hours of February 9, 2015, Haji-Mohamed returned to the same area to find Starks and shot him in the head and killed him, using a pistol that he and another individual stole during the January 22, 2015 armed robbery of a Cricket Wireless Store, near the J.C. Napier neighborhood.

           

 

On January 24, 2015, Haji-Mohamed entered a house on Joseph St., in Nashville, armed with a .40 caliber semi-automatic handgun and looking for a Bloods gang member that he had been in an argument with earlier, as a result of Haji-Mohamed stealing a gun from another Bloods Gang member.  The house was occupied by the gang member’s elderly grandmother and other persons, including several juveniles and a disabled child.  Not finding the person he was looking for, Haji-Mohamed fired numerous rounds into the walls and floor before leaving the house.

 

Haji-Mohamed was eventually arrested on August 25, 2015, by Metropolitan Nashville Police S.W.A.T. officers, who found him hiding in the trunk of a vehicle in the garage of a woman’s house.  At the time of his arrest, Haji-Mohamed was again in illegal possession of another firearm.

 

Haji-Mohamed will be sentenced by Chief U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, Jr., on July 6, 2018.

 

This case was investigated by the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives.  The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U. S. Attorneys Sunny A.M. Koshy and Van S. Vincent.

 

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Nashville Field Division