Trial set in alleged murder-for-hire plot

STERLING HEIGHTS

Woman survived three gunshots in incident

This still shot from a surveillance video shows the female victim being shot at as another woman looks on from the front of her house. SCREENGRAB VIA STERLING HEIGHTS POLICE DEPARTMENT

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By Jameson Cook

jcook@medianewsgroup.com

A Flint rapper accused of hiring a man to murder a Sterling Heights woman in 2020 faces a February trial in that case but is scheduled to first go on trial on drug charges, according federal court documents

Clifton E. Terry III, 33, a rapper aka “Cliff Mac” who has referred to himself as the “King of Flint,” and Andre D. Sims, 27, of Grand Rapids, are scheduled to face a Feb. 11 jury trial in front of Judge Shalina Kumar U.S. District Court in Flint for the 2020 non-fatal shooting of a woman as she drove away from her home near Metro Parkway and Dequindre Road in Sterling Heights.

The woman survived three gunshots. No motive was provided.

The attack was caught on ring-camera video that was released to the media.

The pair is charged with murder-for-hire resulting in personal injury, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire resulting in personal injury and using or brandishing a weapon during and in relation to a crime of violence. Sims also faces a charge of felon in possession of ammunition.

Terry was to pay Sims $10,000 for the alleged hit, according to the indictment. The indictment describes extensive text messages between the co-defendants and other people around the time of the shooting, which occurred at about 11:30 a.m. Nov. 28 outside a home at the Park Place Condominiums. Evidence shows the telephones of the two men met in separate vehicles at the nearby Sterling Landings apartments before Sim drove to the victim’s location and waited in his parked vehicle for several hours before trying to kill the woman, the indictment says.

A Jan. 28 pretrial is scheduled in front of Kumar two weeks before the trial is scheduled to take place.

Sims is serving a life-in-prison term for a 2021 murder in Kent County, according to the MDOC. Court records say Terry agreed to not fight his detention while the case is pending.

But before the murder-for-hire trial begins, Terry and Isiah Claiborne, 36, aka “Zeek,” face trial in U.S. District Court in Flint on drug charges after they were indicted in September 2023 on a charge of conspiracy to deliver more than 500 grams of a controlled substance, methamphetamine, from January to October 2021 in the federal Eastern District of Michigan, according to the indictment. Claiborne also was indicted on charges of delivery of or intent to deliver heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine.

Terry, Clairborne, Sims and a fourth man were charged Genesee County for the 2020 slayings of Ammelio G. Wilson Jr. and Lavelle Bergerac Ivy in Burton, Mich. But those charges were dismissed.

A media report from January 2024 said U.S. Attorneys were taking over the cases.