Atlanta rapper Silentó will get 30 years after pleading responsible to killing his cousin | EUROtoday

Silentó, the Atlanta rapper identified for his hit music “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae),” pleaded responsible however mentally in poor health Wednesday to voluntary manslaughter and different prices within the 2021 capturing dying of his 34-year-old cousin.

The 27-year-old rapper, whose authorized identify is Ricky Lamar Hawk, was sentenced to 30 years in jail, DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston mentioned in an announcement.

Hawk additionally pleaded responsible to aggravated assault, possessing a gun whereas committing a criminal offense and concealing the dying of one other. A homicide cost was dropped as a part of the plea settlement.

DeKalb County police discovered Frederick Rooks III shot within the leg and face within the early morning hours of Jan. 21, 2021 exterior a house in a suburban space close to Decatur. Police mentioned the discovered 10 bullet casings close to Rooks’ physique, and safety video from a close-by house confirmed a white BMW SUV rushing away shortly after the gunshots.

A member of the family of Rooks instructed police that Silentó had picked up Rooks in a white BMW SUV, and GPS information and different cameras put the automobile on the website of the capturing.

Silentó confessed about 10 days later after he was arrested, police mentioned. Ballistics testing matched the bullet casings to a gun that Silentó had when he was arrested, authorities mentioned.

Rooks’ brothers and sisters instructed DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Courtney L. Johnson earlier than sentencing that Silentó ought to have gotten an extended sentence, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

The rapper was a highschool junior in suburban Atlanta in 2015 when he launched “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” and watched it skyrocket into a dance craze. Silentó made multiple other albums, but said in an interview with the medical talk show “The Doctors” in 2019 that he struggled with depression and had grown up in a family where he witnessed mental illness and violence.

“I’ve been fighting demons my whole life, my whole life,” he said in 2019.

“Depression doesn’t leave you when you become famous, it just adds more pressure,” Silentó said then, urging others to get help. ”And while everybody’s looking at you, they’re also judging you.”

“I don’t know if I can truly be happy, I don’t know if these demons will ever go away.”

Silentó had been struggling within the months earlier than the arrest. His publicist, Chanel Hudson, has mentioned he had tried to kill himself in 2020.

In August 2020, Silentó was arrested in Santa Ana, California, on a home violence cost. The subsequent day, the Los Angeles Police Department charged him with assault with a lethal weapon after witnesses mentioned he entered a house the place he did not know anybody in search of his girlfriend and swung a hatchet at two individuals earlier than he was disarmed.

In October 2020, Silentó was arrested after police mentioned they clocked him driving 143 miles per hour (230 kilometers per hour) on Interstate 85 in DeKalb County.

Hudson mentioned on the time of Silentó’s arrest within the killing of Rooks that he had been “suffering immensely from a series of mental health illnesses.”