Gakirah Barnes

Gakirah Barnes
An image of Gakirah Barnes. She is holding a revolver in her hand while wearing a red hoodie with a striped interior. She is looking slightly away from the camera.
Barnes in an undated photograph
Born(1997-01-21)January 21, 1997
DiedApril 11, 2014(2014-04-11) (aged 17)[1]
Woodlawn, Chicago, U.S.
Cause of deathShooting
Other names
  • KI
  • Kirah
  • Lil Snoop
Years active2011–2014
OrganizationGangster Disciples gang

Gakirah Barnes, known as K.I. (January 21, 1997 – April 11, 2014), was an American gangster and member of the Gangster Disciples gang in Chicago, Illinois, who allegedly killed numerous people between 2011 and 2014.

Barnes was shot and killed in the Woodlawn area on April 11, 2014, after posting her location on Twitter.

Early life and education

Barnes grew up in the Woodlawn area on Chicago's South Side, an area known for violence.[2] Barnes' father was shot and killed before her first birthday,[3] and two of her close friends were also killed during her childhood.[2] She finished middle school at Perspectives/IIT Math & Science Academy and returned for a freshman year of high school before being arrested for a firearm discharge and put in a youth detention center.[4] Barnes was introduced to the Gangster Disciples street gang by a group of boys when she was 14, and she would join the "St. Lawrence Boys" faction.[2][5]

Gang activity

From age 14 to 17, Barnes was a prominent partaker in gang activity on Chicago's South Side with the "St. Lawrence Boys" faction of the Gangster Disciples street gang.[6][2] She allegedly shot and killed multiple people between 2011 and 2014,[2] including rival Black Disciples gang member Odee Perry, whom "O Block" was informally named after.[2][7]

Death

Twitter communication and shooting

A 2016 study produced by Columbia University found that Barnes utilized the social media platform Twitter (known as X since 2023) often, posting over 27,000 tweets from 2011 until April 2014.[8] On April 11, 2014, Barnes tweeted a photo of herself and her friends on the porch of a home in the Woodlawn neighborhood. At around 3:30 pm CDT,[9] hours after tweeting the photo, Barnes was shot on South Eberhart Avenue in the Woodlawn neighborhood, blocks away from the location where she had taken the tweeted photo and three blocks from where she had lived.[10][11] She was pronounced dead at a hospital by the Cook County Medical Examiner at 5:43 pm CDT,[9][11] due to bullet wounds in her jaw, chest, and neck areas.[12] British magazine Nature noted that the tweet Barnes had posted of her location may have been a contributing factor in her death.[12]

Rapper and Black Disciples gang member Dayvon "King Von" Bennett was named as a suspect in police documents, although a lack of evidence led police to not charge Bennett for the killing.[3][13][14][15] On April 11, 2019, a TV series on Barnes' life and killing premiered on A&E, titled Secret Life of a Gang Girl: The Untold Story.[16] In 2021, unsealed documents released by the Chicago Police Department named Bennett as Barnes' killer.[13][17]

Barnes' killing intensified the already violent feud between the STL/EBT (Gangster Disciples) and O'Block (Black Disciples) factions, sparking further retaliatory shootings and years of online and musical taunting. Federal prosecutors later cited this widened conflict as part of the context leading up to the 2020 murder of rapper FBG Duck.[18]

See also

Notes, citations, and sources

Citations

  1. ^ "Gakirah "K.I." Barnes, age 17". National Gun Violence Memorial. Retrieved July 12, 2025.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Patton et al. 2016, p. 3
  3. ^ a b Kennedy, William (June 27, 2022). "King Von's Disturbing Connection To A 17-Year-Old Girl's Murder". Grunge. Retrieved July 12, 2025.
  4. ^ Chicago Sun-Times (June 9, 2014). Gakirah Barnes: The 17-year old assassin. Retrieved July 12, 2025 – via YouTube.
  5. ^ Patton, Desmond Upton; MacBeth, Jamie; Schoenebeck, Sarita; Shear, Katherine; McKeown, Kathleen (April 2018). "Accommodating Grief on Twitter: An Analysis of Expressions of Grief Among Gang Involved Youth on Twitter Using Qualitative Analysis and Natural Language Processing". Biomedical Informatics Insights. 10 1178222618763155. doi:10.1177/1178222618763155. PMC 5888812. PMID 29636619.
  6. ^ Main, Frank (July 24, 2015). "'She called herself a hitta' — a 17-year-old female assassin operated on the South Side". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved July 12, 2025.
  7. ^ Meisner, Jason; Charles, Sam (October 8, 2023). "Trial set for 6 reputed members of Chicago's O-Block gang charged in brazen Gold Coast slaying of rapper FBG Duck". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved July 12, 2025.
  8. ^ Martineau, Kim (June 21, 2017). "When Words on Twitter Trigger Real-World Violence". Columbia University. Retrieved July 12, 2025.
  9. ^ a b Florez, Emily; Fisher, Alexandria (April 12, 2014). "Mother of Teen Girl Fatally Shot: "It's An Ongoing War"". NBC Chicago. Retrieved July 12, 2025.
  10. ^ Patton et al. 2016, p. 4
  11. ^ a b Patton, Desmond (May 4, 2017). "The Haunting Social Media Trail Left by a Teen Gang Member". VICE. Retrieved July 12, 2025.
  12. ^ a b McCullom, Rod (September 4, 2018). "A murdered teen, two million tweets and an experiment to fight gun violence". Nature. 561 (7721): 20–22. Bibcode:2018Natur.561...20M. doi:10.1038/d41586-018-06169-8. PMID 30181646.
  13. ^ a b B., Mira (July 13, 2021). "King Von Named in 2014 Fatal Shooting of Gakirah Barnes". The Source. Retrieved July 12, 2025.
  14. ^ "Police Name King Von As 17-Yr-Old Gakirah 'K.I.' Barnes' Killer". MTO News. July 13, 2021. Retrieved July 12, 2025.
  15. ^ "King Von Allegedly Identified By Police As 17-Year-Old Gakirah Barnes' Killer". HOT 97. July 13, 2021. Retrieved July 12, 2025.
  16. ^ Swartz, Tracy (March 27, 2019). "New TV show to explore 'secret life' of Chicago teen known for threatening rivals online". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved July 12, 2025.
  17. ^ "Police Release Documents Confirming King Von Murdered Notorious Killer". www.vladtv.com. Retrieved December 5, 2025.
  18. ^ Main, Frank (August 7, 2023). "FBG Duck's Gold Coast killing followed yearslong gang war involving girl gang assassin, other rapper, feds say". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved July 12, 2025.

Sources

  • Patton, Desmund U.; Lane, Jeffery; Leonard, Patrick; Macbeth, Jamie; Smith Lee, Jocelyn R. (January 2016). "Gang violence on the digital street: Case study of a South Side Chicago gang member's Twitter communication". Columbia University. 19 (7). New York City: 1000–1018. doi:10.1177/1461444815625949.
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