A former member of a homegrown teen gang accused of beating another boy to death has detailed the group’s disturbing inner workings in an anonymous interview.
Only identifying himself as Michael, the ex-member spoke to AZ Central in an interview last month, describing how the group of about 40 to 50 regularly attacked other teens in a wealthy suburb of the Phoenix Metropolitan Area.
Among them was Preston Lord, a 16-year-old boy who was beaten to death outside a Halloween party last October – allegedly by seven of the group’s members.
Officially labeled a gang this year, the Gilbert Goons operate across Arizona’s East Valley and the small town for which it is named.
The former member is not among those charged in Lord’s death, and started off by insisting his old crew was ‘just a bunch of rich kids wanting to be bad kids.’
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Only identifying himself as Michael, the ex-member spoke to AZ Central in an interview last month
He described how the group of about 40 to 50 regularly attacked other teens in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area, like the late Preston Lord, who is seen being beaten here
‘They would talk about how if somebody looked at us wrong, we’d beat the s**t out of them,’ he said at the outset of the 16-minute interview.
‘Stuff like that.’
Revealing ‘there are 40 [or] 50’ members in the group, Michael added, ‘The first time seeing them beat someone up, I mean, it didn’t really affect me, if I’m being honest.’
‘I think the kid said something and one of them got mad, and they all just started fighting,’ the teen said of the altercation at a local skate park.
‘He really didn’t stand a chance,’ Michael added. ‘He was like this little short kid.’
‘At one point, the beatings were every night.
‘But before that fact, before it got that bad, it was more like two to four times a weekend.’
The 16-year-old boy was beat to death outside a Halloween party last October – allegedly by seven of the group’s members
The group would go out looking for trouble, he said – using numbers to converge on their often unsuspecting victims.
‘There was never a fight with anyone over, like, the age of 20,’ Michael added – shedding light on the gang’s inner working.
‘I don’t know how they didn’t get tired of beating kids up,’ he said with a laugh.
‘I’d get tired at some point. [I’d] be just like, “Why am I doing this?”‘
Michael left the group sometime within the last year, he said after having a falling out with other gang members.
In the months since, he’s feared for his family’s safety, spurring him to take the precautions while speaking out.
‘They’d be coked out off their mind,’ he said of the gang’s state of mind when they committed their crimes.
‘They’d be off Xanax, Percocet – anything they can get their hands on really.
Obscured as a silhouette, Michael detailed the innerworkings of the gang, which operated out of the wealthy Arizona suburb for months undeterred, he said
‘The majority of them really just smoked weed and did the occasional cocaine.’
‘They were definitely very angry people,’ he continued. ‘Like, you had to watch what you said around them, for sure.
‘Even if you were a part of them,’ he quickly added.
‘Like, they didn’t care who they were beating up really. It could be their best friend.
‘[If] their best friend said something they didn’t like, they’d get beat up,’ the former member said.
‘When we would go out, like, we really didn’t care about who we’d beat up.
‘They wouldn’t really care,’ he continued. ‘They would just beat up anyone who looked at them wrong, talked to them wrong, made them mad.’
Michael went on to claim he played no part in the beatings, saying he only stayed friendly with the more violent members out of ‘fear’ and to sell them marijuana.
When it came to the idea of stopping the beatings, ‘there’s not much you could really do,’ Michael said.
The seven suspects of Preston Lord’s death, from top left to bottom right: Jacob Meisner, Talan Renner, Taylor Sherman, Treston Billey, Talyn Vigil, Dominic Turner, William Owen
‘You kind of just have to let it go,’ he added.
‘A good chunk of these fights, they had brass knuckles,’ the ex-member went on to add.
‘There were other weapons involved – they had gun, knives, etc. The whole nine.’
And when it come to the authorities, Michael said the gang was ‘most definitely not’ afraid of police.
‘We saw the police, the police saw us,’ he exclaimed. ‘I mean, the police knew what was going on.
‘I know for a fact that they did,’ he continued. ‘They’d watched us.
‘I know for a fact they knew what we were doing, because they would watch it happen and still would do nothing about it.’
The Arizona youngster recalled regularly going to the In-N-Out burger shop near Gilbert’s San Tan Mall, and how officers from the town’s police department would regularly ‘drive by’ during their illegal activities.
A memorial for Preston Lord is seen by the sidewalk where he was found unconscious
‘We would have bottles of liquor in our hands, we’d be beating up kids, doing drugs in the parking lot, and they’d just look at us and walk by,’ Michael recalled.
He went on to describe how one night, a member ran away with his girlfriend after taking part in a beatdown of another boy.
‘They (Gilbert PD) came up to us, all drunk, after we’d just – they’d just – beat the crap out of a kid, you know?’ Michael said.
‘And they’d literally just be like, “Oh, we’re not bothering you guys – we just wanted to know if you’ve seen this kid.”
‘And we were all like, “No”. And they just drove off.’
Michael said they were ‘obviously drunk’ and ‘had bottles in our hand.
‘They didn’t do anything about it,’ he said.
‘If we saw Gilbert PD, we’d say, “Gilbert PD doesn’t do s**t. Like, “they’re b****es.” Sh*t like that.
Following a months-long investigation into the group, embattled Gilbert police chief Michael Soelberg confirmed on in May that the group functions as an organized criminal entity
‘There was this [one] police officer that would sit at In-N-Out, and we knew for a fact he wouldn’t do s**t,’ he continued.
‘Whatever we did, he would just turn his head and not look at it. He would just sit there.
‘We’d beat kids up and he’d just sit in the corner of the parking lot with a clear view of what we’re doing.’
Michael said the crew ‘came together from like parties, school, friends.’
‘Really any way you can meet anyone. That’s how we became friends,’ he said.
‘We got together and then we’d all meet up at like, In-N-Out, and then go party.’
Taylor Sherman, one of seven young men accused of beating Lord to death outside a Queen Creek party last October, posted bond in July
Talyn Vigil, 17, is the first of seven teens accused of bashing Preston to death, was also released on bail, despite being charged with first-degree murder
Repeat offender William ‘Owen’ Hines, 18, was also seen assaulting Lord
Turner is also charged with murder in the case, and is accused of terrorizing the small town
Billey is another suspect in Preston’s killing. All the suspects remain under arrest, and are set to stand trial next summer
Renner, 17, is accused of being the bully who delivered the devastating ‘hammer punches’ that ended Lord’s life
Lord’s murder suspects Billey and Meisner are seen above. Both were previously accused in assaults connected to the so-called Goons
Michael admitted he ‘was friends with them. I’d sell them weed, smoke weed with them, party with them’.
‘But I never took part in the actions the would go through – like fighting people and stuff like that,’ he claimed.
Asked why he associated with such a clique, the former Goon admitted ‘I feel like a lot of it was fear.
‘Fear and, they also had drugs – and that was a big part of it,’ he added.
‘People want drugs, and they’d hand them out to people.’
As for the structure of the group, he pointed to several subdivisions: ‘hillbillies… the rich white kids… and the druggies.’
Vigil appeared in Maricopa County Superior Court this summer, before paying off his $1 million bail
The member-turned-informant went on to explain how the fights were often recorded and flaunted on social media.
‘I guess, the point of recording is, just, I don’t know. People find that entertaining,’ he said, before revealing he found the fight videos ‘a little bit’ enjoyable to watch.
However, at one point, the beatings got ‘pretty bad’.
‘We wouldn’t be in the position we are now where Preston’s dead [if not],’ he said.
‘Most of the beatings would lead to broken bones, broken noses, broken jaws.’
The Goons’ reign of terror can be seen here, showing how the gang of youngsters ran amok in the Arizona town before Preston Lord’s death in October
‘You build that ego over time, and you [think], “I’m not going to get caught” [and] “I can do all this damage.”
‘And you want to just keep pushing and pushing and pushing, seeing how far you can get.
‘Until you get caught,’ he said.
‘The people who were arrested were a big part of these beatings,’ Michael said of the seven arrested in connection with the Lord case.
‘But the whole entire group, as a whole, were definitely the main perpetrators.’
Preston’s dad Nick Lord is seen with the teen’s stepmother Melissa Ciconte. During his tell-all interview, the ex-member apologized to the pair for the Goons’ actions
When asked, Michael said he would tell Lord’s parents that he’s ‘sorry that they hurt their son [and that Preston] had to encounter such bad people, because no one should have to go through that.
‘The parents shouldn’t have to go through that,’ he added. ‘My heart hurts for them.
‘If the schools and everyone did more this definitely would not have happened,’ he ended by saying.
‘If the parents and school and these cops had punished these kids for these heinous crimes that they’re committing, then they definitely wouldn’t have a dead kid now.’
The seven suspects in Preston Lord’s murder are Treston Billey, 18, Jacob Meisner, 17, Taylor Sherman, 19, Talan Renner, 17, Dominic Turner, 20, William Owen Hines, 18, and Talyn Vigil, 17.
The Gilbert Police Department officially designated the group a hybrid gang in May, though the defendants in active cases will not face gang-related charges.
They all appeared in court for the first time in August, but their trial is not set to begin until July.
Renner, 17, is accused of being the one to deliver the devastating ‘hammer punches’ that ended Lord’s life during an altercation outside a Halloween party on October 28. He died from his injuries two days later, launching the case.
