3 Baltimore men robbed, killed Queens pot dealer, left body in U-Haul van: feds

A trio of Baltimore men came to Queens to find drug dealers to rob, murdering one of their victims and leaving his zip-tied corpse in a U-Haul van full of weed, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

Jerome Waters, 23, who goes by the nickname “The Engineer,” and his accomplices, Calvin Israel, 23, and William Barnett, 27, are accused of heading up to Queens the night of July 24, looking to rob the victim, Julian Mejias, and a second dealer.

Waters and Barnett got in touch with their targets, pretending they were interested in buying marijuana. But when they showed up at the victims’ stash house, they pulled out guns and zip ties, and summoned the rest of their crew, according to an indictment announced Wednesday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District.

Israel rented a U-Haul van and the crew piled 30 pounds of pot into the vehicle, the feds allege. They forced Mejias and the second dealer into the van and a Jeep, and drove them around Queens, demanding more drugs and money, the feds allege.

At some point on the morning of July 25, as Israel drove the rental van, one of the robbers shot Mejias several times in the head, the feds allege. The crooked crew then fled back to Maryland.

“This was not a spur-of-the-moment crime, but one carefully choreographed,” prosecutors said in a Wednesday court filing. “The defendants and their co-conspirators traveled for approximately four hours via a caravan of vehicles and participants from Maryland to New York.”

Along the way, they were recorded by license plate readers and surveillance cameras, prosecutors said. They left fingerprints, location data placed them in several key spots connected to the robbery, and a witness identified Waters and Israel as the robbers, according to the feds.

Police found Mejias hanging halfway out of the van at about 1:05 a.m. in front of a home on a quiet residential street in Bayside, on 208th St. near 32nd Drive. The 43-year-old Long Island resident still had a zip tie binding one hand, and was surrounded by bags of weed.

Authorities in Maryland arrested Waters and Israel on Wednesday. Barnett remains at large.

“As alleged, the defendants’ premeditated robbery and kidnapping that resulted in a violent death demonstrates the significant threat of guns and drugs in our communities,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said Wednesday.

All three men were indicted in Brooklyn Federal Court and face mandatory life sentences if convicted at trial.