Rapper XXXTentacion's killer, Michael Boatwright, took to social media to defend his actions this week, sparking reignited interest in rapper Drake's connection to the case in February 2023. Initially, Drake was scheduled for a deposition, which was later denied as the judge ruled there was insufficient evidence linking the rapper to XXX, real name Jahseh Onfroy's 2018 death.
XXXTentacion was an up-and-coming 20-year-old artist, who was shot and killed outside Riva Motorsports in Pompano Beach, Florida, during an armed robbery. Drake was initially listed as a potential suspect due to an old Instagram story, in which XXX himself asserted,
"If anybody kills me, it’s Drake.”
However, XXXTentacion later claimed he was hacked, and he died just four months later.
XXXTentacion's lawyer claims no one investigated Drake, letting him off easy
During the murder trial in February 2023, defense attorney Mauricio Padilla iterated that Drake failed to show up for his initial deposition before the trial, and tried to get the court to subpoena him for another one. Furthermore, he insinuated that prosecutors failed to do their due diligence in considering Drake for the murder.
According to Complex, he said at the time,
"Do you think that for one moment, here today, days after the event, he’s killed by two masked men, right? Do you think in the time span that they went and addressed stuff and talked to him? No. Do you think sitting here today, years later any detective has ever asked, you know, Drake or anyone like that? No. They never did that. If any of us were involved in a murder and they said, ‘it’s so-and-so,’ you better believe so-and-so is going to get investigated. But in this case they didn’t do it.”
However, Drake's lawyers retorted, noting that Drake had never properly been served a subpoena, claiming that it was riddled with errors and incomplete, at that. Bradford Cohen, the lawyer, dubbed Padilla's move "oppressive," noting that there was no evidence against his client. The judge ultimately ruled in favor of Drake that same month.
The alleged beef between the two rappers stems from 2017, when Drake was accused of ripping off one of XXXTentacion's hit singles, Look At Me. While Drake, who has been rumored to "bite" others' works in the past, refuted all such claims, XXXTentacion was not happy. He took to X to dish out his anger, and the two never reconciled publicly.
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Three men stood trial and were later convicted for the murder of the SAD! rapper. On October 5, Akademiks TV shared a screenshot of Micheal Boatwright's statement from behind bars, which claims that the world has misunderstood him and there's a truth to it that no one knows.
He asserted that he's "not this evil person that everybody thinks" he is, and not everything on social media is real. He did, however, conclude the statement with an apology.
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