Five people were arrested in Los Angeles, California, on Thursday, July 9 in the shooting death of 20-year-old Brooklyn, New York, rapper Pop Smoke, who was shot and killed on February 19 in Hollywood.
ABC News reports that three adults were taken in, along with two juveniles. The adults are identified as Jaquan Murphy, 21, Keandre D. Rodgers, 18, and Corey Walker, 19. The names of the juveniles aren’t being released for legal reasons.
The adults are being held on $1 million bail. Walker and Rodgers face a charge of murder, while Murphy faces an attempted murder charge. LAPD authorities say the suspects are gang members who also are connected to a September 2019 shooting in Pasadena, California, that took place in the Rose Bowl parking lot. Eighteen-year-old Kamryn Stone was killed during that shooting.
Investigators said the individuals didn’t know Pop Smoke and saw the address to his rented house after he posted photos of himself flashing money and material items on social media. Officials say he inadvertently posted an image on social media that showed the home’s address. They added that the suspects entered the home around 4 a.m., fatally shot the rapper and robbed the house.
Smoke, who’s birth name is Bashar Barakah Jackson, rose to fame as a part of Brooklyn’s drill music scene after releasing his debut mixtape “Meet the Woo” in 2019, which spawned the hit “Welcome to the Party.”
He then released “Meet the Woo 2” in February, a little more than two weeks before his death, and it landed at No. 7 on the Billboard 200.
On July 3, days before the arrests, Smoke’s posthumous album “Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon” was released and is expected to move 200,000 to 225,000 album-equivalent units in its first week, according to HITS Daily Double.
50 Cent, who executive produced the newly released LP, commented on the arrests Thursday and wrote, “Oh s–t, what the f–k was the police waiting for his album to drop too? R.I.P Pop smoke.”
