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FORT WORTH -- An Aryan Circle member who police say was involved in a 2007 shootout in a North Richland Hills neighborhood has been sentenced to four years in prison.
Investigators say the 38-year-old White Settlement man was assigned to kill a high-ranking member who was rumored to be leaving the gang after 18 years.Bryan “Bone” Aiken was sentenced to prison on Friday on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He had been previously charged with engaging in organized criminal activityIn a September 2007 jailhouse interview, Aiken said that he renounced the gang and that a friend had fired the shots to defend themselves.“I have an “X” over that [Aryan Circle] patch to show I’m out,” Aiken said, pointing to a faded Circle tattoo during that interview at the Tarrant County Jail. Aiken has said that he has been targeted because he is an ex-convict and had been in the gang. But law enforcement officials in North Richland Hills didn’t believe him. And prison officials had challenged Aiken’s distance from gangs. A state official had confirmed that Aiken had completed the Gang Renouncement and Disassociation Process in June 2004 when he was in prison. But he rejoined a gang, prison officials said.The shootings According to an arrest warrant affidavit, Aiken was one of four members of the Aryan Circle who went to a house on Redhawk Circle in North Richland Hills on Aug. 7, 2007 on assignment to kill a fellow gang leader. A gun battle erupted when the target and a friend arrived at the house as Aiken and three other men stood outside, the affidavit states. Aiken and his three friends left just as a neighbor called 911 screaming about blood being everywhere, according to the affidavit.Two people were injured in the shooting, but they survived including the intended target, police said. Aiken said he happened to be there after picking up a friend at the North Richland Hills police station and stopped by the house to pick up someone else. Aryan CircleThe gang, a splinter of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, was formed to protect white prisoners within the Texas Prison System. Gang members are usually initiated while in prison and are expected to maintain allegiance to the Aryan Circle once they are released. Members are often given a illegal task to do upon release, and if they do not complete it, they are usually made to suffer by the next member of the gang who is released from prison, officials said. The Aryan Circle is not a typical street gang, and members do not normally wear colors. Instead, they have tattoos of lighting bolts, the initials “AC,” “SS” and other Nazi symbols, officials said. Members normally stay out of public view because their main goal is to push drugs, often in rural areas.DOMINGO RAMIREZ JR., 817-685-3822
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