26th April 2019, Mount Wellington Harley-Davidson dealership. Midday. Josh Masters had just paid for repairs to his motorcycle and ridden away.
2 minutes later, his former best friend arrived in a black Toyota Vitz. Masters returned minutes later.
His gear was playing up. He walked back into the car park wearing his bright white killer bees patch.
Easily recognizable. One shot. The bullet passed through his arm into his torso and lodged in his spine.
Masters lay on the ground defenseless. His former best friend kept walking toward him. Pointed the gun at his head, pulled the trigger.
The 9mm pistol had jammed. He survived. Paralyzed from the waist down, needing caregiver assistance for the rest of his life.
The man who shot him was Okusino Thai, a founding member of the Killer Bees.
Once a close friend, once a brother, the man Josh Masters had built something with from nothing in Otara tried to kill him in a motorcycle dealership car park at lunchtime.
And when the gun jammed, Josh Masters was left alive in a wheelchair, still running the gang.
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Now, let’s go back to where this starts. Masters grew up in Otara, a suburb in South Oakland, sandwiched between Papato and affluent bot, jammed up against the eastern edge of State Highway 1.
The population of Otara is largely Polynesian and poor, and masters came into the world at a time when the divisive dawn raids, when Pacifica people were targeted as overstayers by the New Zealand government, were still raw.
Masters had an unsettled upbringing and education. He was passed around family members and lived all over Utara, attending every primary school, both intermediates and both secondary schools in the district.
Out of that instability, he built something. In the early 2000s, the killer bees sprouted up in Otara as a feeder group to the more established tribesmen motorcycle club.
Masters was its founder and president. A high court judge described him as a charismatic leader with undoubted business acumen.
His profile grew large enough that John Campbell interviewed him on prime time television where masters denied the killer bees had any involvement in methamphetamine.
At the time of the interview, a covert police investigation called Operation Leo was already underway.
Operation Leo delivered its verdict. Masters pleaded guilty to dealing methamphetamine and money laundering. His previous Harley was seized in police raids which sent Masters to prison for 10 years.
10 years and 5 months. While he was inside, the world he had built changed around him.
Many of the original killer bees had graduated to the colors of the tribesmen and reestablished the gang’s dominance in their old stomping ground of Otara.
The feeder gang had been absorbed by the parent. The lines between killer bees and tribesmen, always blurred, had dissolved almost entirely.
Masters came back in 2018. He found his organization had been folded into the tribesmen.
His homecoming was met with resistance from his former friends. Tensions flared with a number of shootings as masters reasserted the killer bees as a fullyfledged motorcycle club with distinctive white patches.
He was rebuilding, reasserting, demanding recognition from the organization that had grown from what he built.
And the tensions that produced between the killer bees and the tribesmen led directly to the car park at Mount Wellington on a Friday lunchtime in April 2019.
The pair were founding members of the Killer Bees. They grew up in Otara, masters and Tay, the charismatic leader and a staunch foot soldier.
Two men who built something together from the same suburb, the same circumstances, the same starting point.
The lines between the gangs were so blurred that masters also held a senior position in the tribesmen.
At one point, they were not just allies, they were founders, brothers. And then masters came back from prison demanding the killer bees be restored to independence.
And the relationship that had been built over decades fractured along a line that neither of them had seen forming.
Taye fired one round at his former friend Josh Masters. The bullet lodged in his spinal cavity.
With Masters lying on the ground defenseless, Taye kept walking toward him and pointed the gun at his head.
He pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. The 9 millm pistol had jammed. That jam is the irony at the center of this entire story.
The man who built the killer bees from nothing was shot by the man who built it with him, left paralyzed on the ground.
A second shot attempted. A jammed gun, the only reason he is alive. And the question that the jammed gun creates.
What happens to a gang whose founder survives an assassination attempt by one of his own is answered by what followed.
Masters did not step back. He did not disappear. The gang rivalry resumed in 2022 in a series of 23 tit fortat shootings and firebombings across Oakland which threatened to spiral out of control from a wheelchair.
The man who could not walk still running the war. The single gunshot passed through Master’s arm into his torso and lodged in his spine leaving him permanently paralyzed.
Taye pleaded guilty to wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. The attempted murder charge was amended.
He was sentenced to 7 years in prison. And then 2022, after several years of relative peace, the gang rivalry resumed in a series of 23 tit fortat shootings and firebombings across Oakland, which threatened to spiral out of control.
23. In several weeks, homes targeted, vehicles targeted. The specific geography of South Oakland’s gang landscape becoming a series of drive-by routes and firebombing targets.
A police operation involving heightened patrols and arrests led to a truce between the killer bees and tribesmen by midJune 2022 halting the immediate escalation.
A truce after 23 attacks brokered by police pressure between two organizations that had once been the same thing and whose founders had once been the same people.
Josh Masters, founder and president of Killer Bees, grew up in Otara, passed around family members, attended every school in the district.
Founded Killer Bees in the early 2000s as a feeder gang to the tribesmen. Pleaded guilty to methamphetamine dealing and money laundering.
10 years 5 months prison. Released 2018. Reasserted Killer Bee’s independence upon return. Tensions with tribesmen and former allies followed.
26th April 2019. Shot at Mount Wellington Harley-Davidson dealership by former founding member Okasatino Tay.
Bullet lodged in spinal cavity. Paralyzed from the waist down. Needs caregiver assistance for the rest of his life.
Taye sentenced to 7 years. 2022 23 shootings and firebombings across Oakland between killer bees and tribesmen.
Police brokered truce in midJune 2022. Masters as of reporting available for this investigation remains in a wheelchair remains associated with the organization he founded.
The war he survived continues to define the gang landscape of South Oakland. Here is what the story of Josh Masters actually shows and the question it leaves that nobody has fully answered.
A man grew up in Otara with nothing stable, no fixed home, no fixed school, no fixed foundation.
He built something, a gang, a structure, a name that eventually made it onto prime time television.
He built it with people he trusted, people who grew up beside him in the same suburb, people who became founding members of the same organization.
And then one of those people shot him in a motorcycle dealership car park at lunchtime, left him paralyzed on the ground, pointed a gun at his head.
The gun jammed. The first question, what does it do to a man to be shot by his best friend and survive?
Not philosophically. Practically, Masters did not retire, did not step back, did not use the wheelchair as an exit.
23 shootings across Oakland in 2022, with Masters still leading the organization from a wheelchair, suggests that whatever the shooting took from him physically, it did not take what he considers the most important thing.
The second question is harder. The Killer Bees began as a feeder gang for the tribesmen.
Masters held a senior position in both at the same time. The lines were so blurred, they were barely lines at all.
Then he came back from prison demanding separation, demanding the killer bees be recognized as independent.
And the man who shot him was the man who had been part of the same organization from the beginning.
The war that followed, 23 shootings, firebombings, a police brokered truce, was fought over a distinction that had barely existed before masters went to prison.
For our community in Alteoroa, the lesson is specific. The killer bees and the tribesmen did not start as enemies.
They started as the same people in the same suburb with the same beginnings. The violence that followed came from inside a relationship, not from outside it.
And the 23 shootings that required a police operation to stop were the consequence of a founding member trying to reassert something.
Independence, recognition, identity that the decade inside prison had made newly urgent. What do you reckon when the most dangerous gang war in South Oakland history was fought between people who built the same organization together?
What does that tell us about where the real fractures in these worlds actually
