15-year-old admit to killing Pop Smoke over a Rolex, detective says
The grim details were revealed during a preliminary hearing on Friday (May 7).
As Pop Smoke’s high-profile court case continues, new details have emerged in his tragic death. According to testimony by an LAPD detective, Pop was shot and killed by a 15-year-old gunman, who along with four others, raided the Hollywood Hills Airbnb the rapper was renting.
LAPD Detective Carlos Camacho revealed his findings during a preliminary hearing in court on Friday (May 7), the New York Daily News reports. Camacho said the intruders were looking for the Brooklyn rapper’s Cuban link chain but they were only able to take his Rolex, which was later sold for $2,000.
“He admitted that he shot the victim three times with a Beretta 9 mm,” Camacho testified. “He said he shot him on the back.” The shooting took place after “a confrontation” with the platinum-selling rapper while he was “in the shower naked.”
The oldest defendant, 20-year-old Corey Walker, also confessed to his role in the deadly incident in a separate secretly recorded interview in jail. Camacho said Walker told an informant in his cell that he and three others used gloves, ski masks and a police scanner to avoid getting caught.
Walker mentioned to the informant that Pop, born Bashar Jackson, fought back. He charged at the intruders before he was “pistol whipped” and was eventually shot in the chest by the 15-year-old suspect, Camacho said.
Walker’s defense lawyer Christopher Darden attempted to have his client’s murder charge dismissed. Darden made the motion, claiming that Walker was only the driver that night and he never entered the house. “He’s clearly not a wider and abettor of premeditated murder,” Darden said. “At most, he’s a principal in a robbery.”
Deputy District Attorney Hilary Williams argued that Walker scouted the house hours before the invasion. He also was well aware that his co-defendants planned to rob the rapper.
The Judge H. Clay Jacke II denied Darden’s request and ruled there was “sufficient cause” to send Walker to trial. If convicted, Walker would be eligible for the death penalty, the Los Angeles County district attorney said.
After the hearing on Friday, Pop’s mom Audrey Jackson spoke with the Daily News. “I didn’t know any of this. It’s all new. I just knew my boy was gone,” she said. “Now it really feels like he’s not coming back. I don’t know what I thought being here would do. I thought something would happen that would help me feel differently. But to hear they kicked him when he was down. It’s so disrespectful and dishonorable. There was no honor in this. And the irony in this is that those same kids are the kids he said he made music for. There needs to be consequences, sufficient consequences.”