A year and a half has gone by since the music world was stripped of one of its most promising rappers, Pop Smoke. The Brooklyn native was shot and killed during a home invasion in a Hollywood mansion he rented in an attempted robbery gone wrong. Four individuals were arrested for the tragic murder: Corey Walker and Keandre Rodgers, who were 19 and 17 respectively at the time of their arrest, as well as a 17-year-old and a 15-year-old whose names were not revealed, due to them being minors.
Almost a year after their arrests, Walker’s trial is underway, and on Tuesday a big decision was shared by the court. According to video provided by The Shaderoom, Deputy District Attorney Hilary Williams, the prosecutor for the case, said that the maximum sentence that Walker would face if he were convicted is life without parole, meaning that the now 20-year-old defendant will avoid the death penalty.
The reason could be that he was not the individual who pulled the trigger on Pop Smoke. The defendant who was 15 years old at the time allegedly confessed to being the triggerman in the murder during a recorded interview at a juvenile detention center in May 2020. “He admitted that he shot the victim three times with a Baretta 9 (mm.),” LAPD Detective Carlos Camacho said during a preliminary hearing for Walker. He added that the teenager “admitted they asked for the jewelry” from the rapper before ending up in a “confrontation” that led to shots being fired.
In other news related to Pop Smoke, the late rapper’s second posthumous album is set to arrive on July 16. The self-titled effort contains 17 songs and the already released track “Outro.”
