Three men were given life sentences on Thursday for the 2018 killing of star rapper XXXTentacion, who was shot outside a South Florida motorcycle shop while being robbed of $50,000.
Michael Boatwright, 28, Dedrick Williams, 26, and Trayvon Newsome, 24, were each convicted last month of first-degree murder and armed robbery by a jury following eight days of deliberations.
They will have no chance for parole or early release.
Broward County judge Michael Usan told them: “You’ll spend every hour and every day and every week and every year of your life in that cell.
“And one day, they’ll come and open up that cell in the morning and you will have passed on, and only on that day you would’ve served your sentence.”
Judge told them
Prosecutors linked the rapper’s killers to the shooting through surveillance video and phone footage of the men flashing handfuls of $100 notes hours after the ambush.
Footage showed XXXTentacion – real name JahsehOnfroy – leaving Riva Motorsports with a friend when an SUV vehicle swerved in front of him and blocked his BMW.
Surveillance video showed two masked gunmen emerging and confronting the 20-year-old singer at the driver’s window, with one shooting him repeatedly. They then grabbed a Louis Vuitton bag containing cash that XXXTentacion had just withdrawn from the bank, got back into the SUV and sped away. The rapper’s friend was not harmed.
Boatwright was identified as the main shooter and Newsome accused of being the other gunman. Williams was accused of driving the SUV and former friend of the rapper, Robert Allen, accused of being inside the vehicle.
Allen pleaded guilty last year to second-degree murder, but his sentence was delayed until the conclusion of his accomplices’ trial. A date for his sentencing has not yet been set.
During the sentencing, the late rapper’s manager SolomanSabande – giving a statement on behalf of the star’s family – said he was murdered “senselessly” and accused his killers of not showing an “ounce of remorse”.
He said: “He was a beam of hope for all that new him and his music. But Jahseh’s life was not only robbed from us and his family, it was robbed from his extended family of millions of people across the globe…
