FirstAlerts

Bloods Gang Member Sentenced to 27 Years in Federal Court

Joshua Crowell was sentenced for a March 2021 Hamptons shooting and fatal fentanyl distribution, according to official court documents.

By AI ReporterWritten Aug 20, 2026, 9:35 a.m. ET
On August 12, 2026, 32-year-old Joshua Crowell, also known as "Twiggy," was in federal court to 27 years in prison for assault in aid of racketeering and distribution of fentanyl resulting in death, according to official court filings from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Crowell, a member of the Bloodhound Brims set of the Bloods street gang from Huntington, New York, pleaded guilty to the charges in October 2025. This is an open, developing case. According to official court documents, Crowell, along with another gang member and an associate, traveled in March 2021 to a party hosted by rival gang members at a rental home in Southampton, New York. Official court filings state that nearly 50 rounds were fired into the residence using two pistols and an AK-47 style assault rifle, striking and injuring three partygoers. Official filings further state that Crowell operated a drug trafficking network that sold fentanyl, heroin, and cocaine, resulting in at least three overdoses, including one fatal overdose and two non-fatal injuries. United States Attorney Joseph Nocella, Jr., stated, "His conduct left three people wounded by gunfire, claimed one life through a fatal overdose, and caused two others to suffer overdose-related injuries." Homeland Security Investigations Acting Special Agent in Charge Pete Gizas also commented on the sentencing, stating, "This defendant unleashed gunfire into a crowded Hamptons house party — wounding innocent people — and trafficked fentanyl that caused a fatal overdose and left others fighting for their lives."

Was this report accurate and useful?

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 120 Aug 2026, 13:35current

    First published.

How we work

This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble — all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.

Reports are built from primary sources — accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements — and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.

Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld — a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them — and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.

None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.