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A Chicago criminal notorious for livestreaming the racist torture of a disabled white teenager has been arrested again.
Tesfaye Cooper, 30, who served a seven-year prison sentence for the 2017 on-camera incident, was arrested on April 8 after allegedly chasing down and mugging a cyclist near a train station in the city.
He was taken into custody alongside Mazi Pearson, 33, who also had active warrants for failing to appear in court on four pending felony court cases, reports CWB Chicago.
The two men allegedly chased and robbed the white cyclist when the victim waved at them, which led them to shout that they are 'GDs', or 'Gangster Disciples', police said.
Cooper and Pearson allegedly chased the man into the train station, punched and spat at him, before stealing his bike and fleeing.
Police captured the two men soon after, and Pearson was allegedly found with ten bags of heroin and four bags of cocaine. Pearson was charged with robbery and possession of a controlled substance, and Cooper was charged with robbery.
The incident comes just two years after Cooper finished serving his seven-year prison stretch for the torture of the disabled 18-year-old.
Cooper and three others brutally tortured and racially abused the teenager while livestreaming it on Facebook Live. The violent incident generated such outrage that then-President Barack Obama even expressed his horror at it.
Tesfaye Cooper, 30, a Chicago criminal who shocked the nation by livestreaming the racist torture of a disabled white teenager in 2017, has been arrested again after allegedly robbing a white cyclist
Cooper, 30, who served a seven-year prison sentence for the 2017 on-camera torture incident, when he and three others kidnapped and abused a disabled white teenager for three days and livestreamed the crime on Facebook
Cooper was taken into custody alongside Mazi Pearson, 33, (pictured) who also had active warrants for failing to appear in court on four pending felony court cases
Cooper was caught by police following the torture of the teenager alongside Jordan Hill, Tanishia Covington, and Brittany Covington.
The gang kidnapped and tied up the victim in a Chicago apartment as they physically tortured and racially abused him on the livestream.
They could be heard shouting 'f*** white people' and 'f*** Trump' during the ordeal.
During the days-long torture campaign, Hill also called the victim's mother and demanded $300 in ransom for his return.
The victim was kidnapped on New Year's Eve after telling his parents he was meeting Hill at a McDonald's and staying at his home.
Instead, Hill drove the victim around in a stolen van for a couple of days, ending up at a home in Chicago, where two of the other suspects lived.
Horrific livestream footage showed the victim with tape over his mouth and his hands tied as he was beaten and abused for hours at a time.
The victim eventually escaped and a police officer spotted him wandering down a street, bloodied and disoriented.
Cooper in his original mugshot in 2017
From left. Brittany Covington, Tanisha Covington and Jordan Hill were each handed plea deals following the torture incident
Following the gang's arrests, they were all given plea deals, with Brittany Covington avoiding jail time and being handed a sentence of four years' probation.
Tanishia Covington was handed three years behind bars, Cooper was given seven and Hill eight.
The relatively light sentences sparked backlash at the time as gory details of the victim's torture emerged.
The gang had gagged the victim for days, cut out part of his scalp with a knife, and forced him to drink from a toilet, police said.
Prosecutors said the gang's livestream stayed up on Facebook for over half an hour, while the victim's abuse lasted over three days.
When Cooper was sentenced, the victim's family said they went out of their way to ensure he would receive support services when he was freed from prison.
The judge in the case told Cooper: 'They’re interested in making sure … that there are some resources that are available that will help you... To make you understand that hatred is not something that is going to be a possibility for you when you get out.'
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