Chicago’s soldier has 9 years in prison for traffic weapons that fed the South Side gang war

A man on the south side who joined the army at age 18 has been sentenced to more than nine years in prison after being sentenced for arms trafficking to Chicago, where the authorities say the weapons helped feed a gang war.

Brandon Z. Miller, 25, declared himself guilty of participating in a conspiracy with other soldiers in Fort Campbell, the base of the army on the border of Kentucky-Tennessee, where they were parked.

Miller and his crew were accused of buying more than 100 weapons in Tennessee in 2020 and 2021 and selling them to the members of the Chicago gangs for a street war on the south side that left at least a dozen dead people and dozen more dozens wounds. One of the weapons, a 9 mm glock pistol, was used in four murders and a mass shooting, According to prosecutors.

Miller was able to obtain weapons due to the “permissive laws of firearms” of Tennessee, according to prosecutors.

They say that four pending federal cases also accuse people of buying weapons in Middle Tennessee and traffic them to Chicago.

Warren County, Kentucky, prison.

In a separate case, Miller had been accused of recruiting a girlfriend, also a soldier, to steal money from the Federal Payment check protection program, Established to help companies fighting during the COVID-19 pandemic. That case was dismissed when it was sentenced at the end of November for arms trafficking.

Miller was sentenced in a military court in 2023 to 30 months of confinement for the sexual assault of a woman in Clarksville, Tennessee. Its weapons ruling and its military sentence must be attended consecutive.

In the judicial documents, Miller’s lawyers played the statement of the prosecutors that he was a member of the street gang, saying that he would not have obtained a security authorization from the army if it were. They had asked the judge for a minor sentence, eight years in prison, citing his “extraordinarily difficult childhood.”

Jarius Brunson and Demarcus Adams soldiers, who lived with Miller at their home in Clarksville, Tennessee, near the base of the army, declared themselves guilty last year for the charges of firearms trafficking and are waiting for sentences.

More than a dozen reputed members of a South Side gang alliance have been accused of buying Miller weapons and their crew. Four of them, Blaise Smith, Raheem Johnson, Bryant Larkin and Terrell Mitchell, declared themselves guilty. Each has been sentenced to five years in prison. Dwight Lowry was sentenced to probation. And the parks of Dreshion and Lázarus Greenwood attributed time. The rest of the cases are pending.