Trio guilty in rob-slaying of rapper XXXTentacion
Three Florida men were convicted Monday of killing rising rap star XXXTentacion during a robbery in 2018.
Michael Boatwright, Trayvon Newsome and Dedrick Williams were found guilty of first-degree murder. A fourth man, Robert Allen, had already pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.
The jury of seven women and five men deliberated for seven days before reaching their consensus late Monday morning.
Boatwright, 28; Newsome, 24; Williams, 26; and Allen, 26 were in south Florida on June 18, 2018, plotting to rob someone, according to prosecutors.
They ran into XXXTentacion, whose legal name was Jahseh Onfroy, at Riva Motorsports in Fort Lauderdale. Williams, a regular customer at the store, recognized the rap star and identified him as a potential target, investigators said.
Williams and Allen turned into lookouts, following XXXTentacion into the store, then leaving ahead of him and reporting his movements back to Boatwright and Newsome in the SUV, prosecutors said.
As the rap star drove away from the store in his BMW, the four men used an SUV to box him in. Williams was behind the wheel, according to investigators who identified his fingerprints on the steering wheel. Allen admitted to riding in the passenger’s seat.
Boatwright and Newsome got out of the SUV holding guns. Their actions were captured on parking lot security cameras. Both men walked up to XXXTentacion’s BMW. Boatwright fatally shot XXXTentacion, then snatched his Louis Vuitton bag with $50,000 cash inside.
In addition to Allen’s testimony against his partners in crime and the security video, prosecutors used cell phone data to prove all four men were at the crime scene. They also cited social media posts in which the men flaunted the cash they’d stolen from XXXTentacion.
Defense attorneys had argued that investigators didn’t pursue the case fully or consider other suspects, even going so far as to try to depose Drake, who reportedly beefed with XXXTentacion before his murder. Drake was never actually deposed, as the judge ruled there was no evidence to justify such questioning.
Before his murder and despite his own legal troubles, XXXTentacion was an ascending star whose second album “?” topped the charts in March 2018, three months before he was killed.