Former Child Star Sentenced to Prison for Cousin’s Murder: Rapper Silentó Pleads Guilty

Silentó, the Atlanta rapper best known for the 2015 viral hit “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae),” has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for the 2021 fatal shooting of his cousin.

DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Courtney Johnson announced the sentencing Wednesday after the 27-year-old rapper, whose legal name is Ricky Lamar Hawk, pleaded guilty but mentally ill to voluntary manslaughter in connection with the 2021 death of his cousin, 34-year-old Frederick Rooks III.

Silentó pleaded guilty to three additional charges – aggravated assault, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime and concealing the death of another — according to DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston. As part of his plea deal, another murder charge was dropped.

Silentó has been in jail since his February 2021 arrest. According to the DeKalb County Police Department, officers responded to reports of a person shot at the intersection of Deep Shoals Circle and Corners Crossing in the Panthersville area at around 3:37 a.m. on Jan. 21, 2021. When officers arrived at the scene, they found Rooks, 34, “suffering from multiple gunshot wounds.” He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Investigators recovered 10 bullet casings near Rooks’ body, and a family member of Rooks told police that Silentó picked Rooks up from a friend’s home in a white BMW SUV. That same vehicle was seen on security camera footage from a nearby home “fleeing the area at a high rate of speed just a few minutes after the gunfire.”

The rapper was arrested on Feb. 1, 2021, and confessed to shooting his cousin during an interview with investigators. Additionally, ballistics testing matched the bullet casings to a gun that Silentó had on him at the time of his arrest.

During his Wednesday sentencing, Rooks’ brothers and sisters told the judge before sentencing that Silentó should have gotten a longer sentence, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. His brother told Johnson, “We just want justice.”

Silentó became an overnight star in 2015 while he was still a high school junior in suburban Atlanta when he released his first single, “Watch Me.” The song hit No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and won Best Dance Performance at the Soul Train Awards, with the rapper even being invited to perform at the BET Awards with the Black-ish cast.

As he launched to stardom, Silentó also faced trouble with the law on numerous occasions. He was arrested twice in one week in California in August 2020 on domestic violence and gun charges. In October 2020, he was arrested in Georgia for driving over 140 mph on I-85. During an appearance on the medical talk show The Doctors a year earlier, the rapper had opened up about his struggles with mental health, revealing that he struggled with depression and had grown up in a family where he witnessed mental illness and violence, per the Associated Press.