Big Paybacc, the rapper who brought the world the 2011 track “Gangsta Luv,” was gunned down while eating lunch inside a California McDonald’s on Thursday.
Habeeb Ameer Zekajj, also known as Big Paybacc, was sitting down in the Palmdale restaurant, about 35 miles outside of Los Angeles, at about 12:30 p.m, when the killer walked into the McDonalds and shot him.
According to police about 15 other people were in the restaurant at the time.
Zekajj’s girlfriend, Jessica Jefferson, told a local TV station that the rapper had three children.
“For them to be that bold, to run into a McDonald’s in daylight, in front of people, kids you know, and take some kind of vengeance toward somebody, it’s inhumane,” Jefferson told CBS2.
She told reporters that he had just moved from the Valley and was renting a home in Palmdale and they had plans to move in together.
“He’s a good rapper, and he has so many followers and people who stand behind him,” she said. “He really is a good, solid person.”
Jefferson reportedly had a feeling it was her boyfriend when she heard of the incident.
“I just knew it,” she said in an interview. “I drove by and saw his truck… I had just seen him. He left my house to come here.”
Police do not believe the 38-year-old was the victim of a random killing.
“It appears to detectives that the victim was the intended target of the suspect and that this was not a random shooting,” Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Deputy Guillermina Saldana said.
The suspect came in, shot Zekajj and then fled the scene.
“There was no altercation that the [witnesses] saw,” a police spokesperson told reporters. “This guy just walked in through one door, shot him and left out another door. So it looked like something personal. He had something against this individual. It wasn’t like he shot up the McDonald’s. He just shot him and left.”
