Ray Jacobs, a singer who co-wrote hits for Justin Bieber and DJ Khaled, had simply left a West Adams bar when a silver Chevrolet Impala and white Mercedes-Benz SUV pulled alongside.
Muzzle flashes erupted from the vehicles’ open home windows, a Los Angeles Police Division officer testified at a listening to final month.
Jacobs, 31, who carried out beneath the title August 08, was killed Aug. 26, 2023, in what prosecutors assert was a case of mistaken id.
The alleged shooters — members of the Rollin’ 30s Harlem Crips — believed Jacobs was related to the Black P-Stones, a rival Bloods gang, a prosecutor stated on the listening to.
Jacobs wasn’t affiliated with any gang — however prosecutors stated he was sporting a baseball cap with a pink brim.
The prosecution’s concept of why Jacobs was focused is a throwback to a extra violent period. Los Angeles — and particularly, the West Adams neighborhood the place Jacobs was killed — is a far safer place than it was within the Nineties, when the town noticed greater than 1,000 homicides a 12 months.
With fashionable gang beefs typically beginning as spats on social media and spilling over into focused violence, indiscriminate shootings are much less widespread.
Attorneys representing the alleged killers argued there isn’t any proof, simply hypothesis concerning the coloration of a hat, to recommend Jacobs was mistaken for a gang member.
However within the prosecution’s telling, Jacobs’ case reveals gentrification and plummeting murder numbers haven’t modified the truth that a younger Black man can nonetheless be killed for sporting the improper coloration within the improper neighborhood.
Jacobs, who grew up in Lengthy Seashore and Lynwood, discovered success in 2015 co-writing the hit “I’m the One” with Bieber and Khaled.
An early member of the 88Rising music collective, Jacobs launched his debut solo EP, “Father,” in 2018, The Occasions reported. He later signed with Def Jam Recordings, which produced a 2022 LP, “Seasick,” that included collaborations with Jhené Aiko, Schoolboy Q and Joji.
In an announcement after his demise, Jacobs’ file label referred to as him a “sensible songwriter, an achieved musician and a singular artist.”
Hours after Jacobs was killed, Officer Daniel Ivan of the Los Angeles Police Division went to Cedars Sinai Medical Heart to interview the singer’s pal, who’d been wounded in the identical incident.
The pal stated they’d gone to the Bar at Johnny’s, a beer and wine spot hooked up to Johnny’s Pastrami. The longtime sandwich stand, which closed in 2015, reopened 5 years later as a part of a revitalization of the West Adams neighborhood.
Simply earlier than the bar closed, the pal stated, he and Jacobs walked two ladies they’d met that night time to their vehicles. As they crossed the road, the pal heard gunfire — 15 to twenty photographs, Ivan testified. Shot in each legs, he hid behind a trash can. Jacobs stumbled, then collapsed.
The pal didn’t see the shooters, Ivan testified.
Utilizing surveillance footage, Ivan decided the killers drove an Impala and Mercedes-Benz sport utility automobile. The registered proprietor of the Impala was Garey Marshall, then 42, the officer testified. The SUV was rented by the Turo car-sharing app to the girlfriend of Grady Montgomery, then 34, in keeping with Ivan.
Each Marshall and Montgomery are members of the Rollin’ 30s, the officer testified.
Ivan stated each vehicles and each males have been captured on surveillance video at Martin Luther King Jr. Park, a hangout for the Rollin’ 30s, shortly earlier than Jacobs was killed.
Marshall and Montgomery have been seen on the park sporting white shirts, Ivan stated, and the surveillance video, though grainy, confirmed the shooters wore white shirts. Marshall’s telephone data confirmed that he traveled towards West Adams earlier than Jacobs was killed, in keeping with Ivan.
Gabriel De Alba, an LAPD officer who screens the Rollin’ 30s, testified that the gang began within the Nineteen Seventies as a bunch referred to as The Armed Godfathers. Its territory now stretches from Jefferson to King boulevards and from Normandie Avenue to Crenshaw Boulevard, De Alba stated.
De Alba testified to help a gang enhancement towards Marshall and Montgomery, who’ve pleaded not responsible to expenses of killing Jacobs and making an attempt to homicide his pal.
Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman has licensed prosecutors to file the enhancements — which improve jail phrases if prosecutors show that the crime benefited a gang — after his predecessor, George Gascon, banned their use.
The Rollin’ 30s’ enemies embody the Black P-Stones, who declare the world the place Jacobs was killed, De Alba stated. The Black P-Stones typically put on pink, though De Alba stated gangs now not coloration code as strictly as they as soon as did.
Zino Osehobo, an legal professional for Marshall, stated it was pure hypothesis that his consumer was even at Jacobs’ killing, a lot much less that he was a shooter.
“I can’t even name it circumstantial proof,” he stated in asking Superior Courtroom Decide Craig Veals to dismiss the homicide expenses. “It’s an assumption-based case.”
Deion Benjamin, who represents Montgomery, stated there was “no proof” to help a gang enhancement. The mere reality somebody was killed in a spot {that a} gang probably considers its territory doesn’t make it a gang crime, Benjamin informed the choose.
Veals disagreed, ruling he’d seen sufficient proof for Montgomery and Marshall to face trial on expenses of homicide and tried homicide with the gang enhancement.
It was “fully believable” that the defendants mistook Jacobs and his pal for rivals “given the colour of the cap in query,” the choose stated. “Certain, there are points right here. It’s a circumstantial case. It’s not a weak one by any stretch.”
