crime
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE
Source: Anadolu / Getty / Brian Thompson
More news to prove we are living in what feels like a Netflix drama series: Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare’s Insurance division, was fatally shot Wednesday morning outside of the Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan in what the NYPD is already calling a “targeted attack.”
Social media was buzzing this morning when breaking news of Brian Thompson, 50, was gunned down in broad daylight. The details, which read like the plot of a movie, claim a masked man approached Thompson, who was in town to speak at a conference Wednesday and killed him using what witnesses claimed was a “silent gun.”
Per the New York Post:
Brian Thompson, 50, was at the hotel around 6:46 a.m., arriving early for a conference, when a masked man allegedly waiting for the CEO repeatedly shot at him along Sixth Avenue before dashing off on a bicycle, police sources told The Post.
Thompson was hit in the chest, prompting a desperate attempt by first responders to save him with CPR, harrowing video shows.
He was rushed in critical condition to the Mt. Sinai Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead, police said.
Surveillance photos obtained from the news site show the shooter aiming the murder weapon at Thompson in front of the posh hotel and then fleeing on a bicycle down an alley.
NYC’s embattled Mayor, Eric Adams, spoke about the shooting during a separate press conference, telling reporters, “It appears as though this was a targeted murder,” he added, “It seemed to have been clearly targeted by an individual, and we will apprehend that individual.”
Officials say no arrests have been made and are offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the suspect’s arrest.
People Are Using The Apparent Assassination To Call Out United Healthcare
Social media is sharing their thoughts on the shooting. Basically, they are dragging United Healthcare for its reputation for denying coverage to customers, even alluding to the shooter being someone who was denied coverage by the company.
“I’ll be waiting on pins and needles to find out what demonic shit United Healthcare did to this man or his family,” one user on X, formally Twitter, wrote.
Another user on X wrote, “The police will be investigating every American with a United health care plan.”
Still, this is tragic news; no one deserves to be gunned down in such a manner, but people do have a point about the United States health insurance system and how terrible it is.
We will continue to follow this story to see how this all plays out. Until then, you can see more reactions in the gallery below.
1. Very unerious, smh.
4. What is wrong with y’all?
HipHopWired Featured Video
Source: CFOTO / Getty / Lululemon
One Connecticut couple f***ed around and eventually found out after allegedly going on a Lululemon boosting spree across the country.
NBC News reports that Jadion Richards, 44, and Akwele Lawes-Richards, 45, were pinched at a Lululemon store in Woodbury, Minnesota, and charged with organized retail theft on November 4.
According to the news website, the couple boosted around $1 million in Lululemon merchandise nationwide. Before their arrest, the complaint notes that the couple visited another Lululemon location in Roseville, Minnesota, with an unidentified man, where they allegedly stole $5,000 worth of product.
The couple allegedly had an elaborate theft scheme they used when visiting the locations that ensured they could make off with the goods.
Per NBC News:
An investigator for Lululemon said the couple and the organized crime group they work for had been stealing from stores across the country since September and are responsible for nearly $1 million worth of financial loss for the company, per the complaint.
The investigator explained how the couple allegedly run their theft scheme, with Richards typically entering the store first and purchasing a couple of small items. Richards and Lawes-Richards would then remove a security sensor from another item in the store that they’d attach to the small items Richards purchased, then steal other items that they’d conceal under their clothes and jackets.
Lawes-Richards and a third person would walk out of the store ahead of Richards with the stolen items, and when the security sensor at the store would beep, Richards would offer his bag that contained the small purchased item with a sensor attached to it to staff, according to the complaint. The couple would then take the stolen items to another store to exchange them without a receipt.
Well damn.
Lululemon’s Statement on The Couple’s Arrest
In a statement, Lululemon’s vice president of asset protection, Tristen Shields, spoke on the couple’s arrest, saying that the company is committed to “creating a safe and secure environment” for shoppers and staff.
Shields continued, “This outcome continues to underscore our ongoing collaboration with law enforcement and our investments in advanced technology, team training, and investigative capabilities to combat retail crime and hold offenders accountable. We remain dedicated to continuing these efforts to address and prevent this industry-wide issue.”
After the couple’s arrest, authorities obtained a search warrant. They found large suitcases containing an estimated $50,000 worth of Lululemon products in a rented room at the J.W. Marriott in Bloomington, Minnesota.
Online records indicate the couple was booked into the Ramsey County Jail on November 14. NBC News reports that Lawes-Richards got out on $30,000 bail on Tuesday, November 19, and Richards was released Thursday, November 21, on $100,000 bail.
HipHopWired Featured Video
Source: Julia Beverly / Getty
It seems like on a near-weekly basis, there are new lawsuits being filed that accuse Sean “Diddy” Combs of depraved acts of sexual abuse. This week, it has been reported that five new lawsuits have been filed by women and men who claim the thoroughly disgraced Bad Boy mogul drugged and sexually assaulted them, according to Page Six.
One plaintiff, a man listed as “John Doe,” claimed he was assaulted after he was invited to an afterparty attended by a myriad of stars at a residence in Miami by one of Combs’ associates.
From Page Six:
The plaintiff claimed in the lawsuit, filed by Houston-based attorney Tony Buzbee, that he started to fall in and out of consciousness after he consumed a beverage.
The man alleged that he woke up naked, feeling a sharp pain in his rectum and anus. When he turned around, he noticed a fully erect Combs, 55, allegedly trying to insert his penis into his anus.
John Doe claimed the Revolt co-founder talked dirty to him while smiling disturbingly and he could not fight back due to the alleged drugs in his system.
When he woke up naked the following day, the plaintiff claimed in the lawsuit, he was given his clothes and escorted back to the nightclub where the first party took place.
A second lawsuit, also filed by Busbee, lists the plaintiff as “Jane Doe,” and the woman, reportedly from Maryland, claimed in her filing that she was drugged and forced to perform oral sex on Diddy during a Halloween party in New York City in 2001 when she was 18. She was allegedly escorted to a black SUV limousine where the “All About the Benjamins” artist was waiting with other members of his security team, whom she was forced to perform the act in front of while Diddy sprayed her with champagne and called her derogatory names. She also alleged that she was not allowed to leave the limo until she performed oral sex on everyone who was present.
More from Page Six:
A third victim claimed she was a 17-year-old victim when she was allegedly drugged and raped by Combs while attending his Fourth of July all-white party in the Hamptons in 2004.
The fourth plaintiff claimed he was drugged and raped after traveling to Manhattan for a music video role in October 2001. The victim alleged that Combs’ bodyguard at the time was holding down his arms and at one point, also put on a condom himself.
The fifth plaintiff was a man who claimed he was also drugged and sodomized by Combs after he attended a party at the rapper’s NYC home “in or around 2022.”
If you were to add up all of his accusers so far and assume they were telling the truth, then Diddy has been a monster for at least 20 some-odd years. If even half the allegations against him are true, justice is long overdue.
HipHopWired Featured Video
Source: Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty
Sean “Diddy” Combs is going to trial, but he’s going to be sitting in jail for months. The disgraced music mogul’s trial date has been set to start in May 2025.
Per various reports, Judge Arun Subramanian scheduled a trial date of May 5, 2025 at a hearing on Thursday, October 10. Diddy’s legal team had reportedly requested the trial to occur in April or May.
However, while the defense got a date they wanted, Diddy was once again denied bail, his third attempt at a pre-trial release.
NEW: A federal judge in Manhattan has set a May 5, 2025 trial date for Sean “Diddy” Combs’ racketeering and sex trafficking case.
Combs is here in court, and smiled and waved to his sons in the gallery.
More to come…
— Ben Kochman (@benkochman) October 10, 2024
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Diddy was arrested in New York City on September 16 and has been jailed at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn on charges that include racketeering and sex trafficking.
The “Been Around The World” rapper has pleaded not guilty while the court of public opinion has been slamming him ever since his former girlfriend and ex-Bad Boy artist Cassie sued him back in late 2023. That lawsuit essentially set everything in motion, with soon after its settlement multiple lawsuits were filed alleging similar accounts of sexual abuse, a video surfaced of Diddy beating on Cassie (that confirmed an account described in her lawsuit) and in September, Diddy’s indictment.
Combs’ mother, Janice Combs, who recently described her son’s prosecution as a lynching, was in attendance along with several of his children.
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE
Source: The County of Dallas / Mr. Prada
Mr. Prada, a TikTok star famous for posts on the social media platform who once dropped a post practicing for his mugshot, is now behind bars after being arrested for second-degree murder.
Terryon Thomas, also known as Mr. Prada, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder of a therapist after his body was found along a stretch of a Louisiana highway over the weekend.
Authorities in Dallas County, Texas, detained the social media star on Monday, a booking sheet revealed.
Per Page Six, the 20-year-old was originally arrested for “damage to property, resisting an officer, and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle” before he was charged with obstruction and murder in the second degree.
He is currently being held without bond.
The car involved in the arrest belonged to William Nicholas Abraham, a Baton Rouge, Louisiana.-based therapist whose body was found wrapped in a tarp alongside a Louisiana highway on Sunday.
According to the coroner’s office via the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office in Hammond, Louisiana, Abraham, 69, died of blunt-force trauma. His death was immediately ruled a homicide.
Tangipahoa Parish authorities shared surveillance camera screenshots of a person they claimed was the last person seen driving Abraham’s vehicle in Baton Rouge.
The person driving the vehicle sped away from authorities during a traffic stop and fled on foot after crashing the vehicle.
Abraham Was Accused of Touching an 11-year-old Boy
Abraham also had his run-in with the law after he was arrested in 2015 after being accused of inappropriately touching an 11-year-old boy during a therapy session.
He was never charged, and Tangipahoa Sheriff Gerald Sticker said he is aware of Abraham’s previous arrest, but the focus remains on figuring out where he was killed.
Of course, users on X, formerly Twitter, put on their detective hats and are trying to connect the dots between Abraham’s previous arrest and his murder.
Without any shred of proof, one post on X read, “Hearing that Mr Prada allegedly was SA’d by his therapist,told police and they did nothing and now he’s facing charges for kllllng the therapist is insane. People need to believe victims so they don’t turn into suspects. That boy been crying for help for months.”
That post has over 99 thousand likes.
You can see more reactions in the gallery below.
2. And. Here. We. Go.
4. Good question
6. Because the lies spread faster than the truth
Eight years after the deadly mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in June 2016, local police closed their investigation into the venue’s former owners, with no charges being filed. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news In an emailed statement to The Associated Press, the Orlando Police Department stated […]
HipHopWired Featured Video
Source: Michael M. Santiago / Getty
Geoge Santos, the CONman CONservative who CONNED his way into CONgress before he was expelled last year amid indictments on a then-growing number of federal fraud charges, is now expected to plead guilty to fraud charges in order to avoid a trial he doesn’t believe he can win due to how well-known he is. (I mean, it probably doesn’t help that he’s well-known for lying about his education, work history, charities he started and his race and ethnicity in order to take up space in the U.S. House.)
From the New York Times:
Mr. Santos arrived at federal court in Central Islip, N.Y., ahead of a 3 p.m. hearing where he is expected to enter a guilty plea and give a statement acknowledging the crimes he has agreed to plead to, according to two lawyers and two other people with knowledge of the case.
Pleading guilty would allow Mr. Santos to avoid a trial on nearly two dozen charges — including wire fraud, money laundering and stealing public funds — for which he was facing as many as 22 years in prison.
Santos was charged with a total of 23 federal counts of fraud-related activity, including charges he initially pleaded not guilty to such as allegations that he stole money from donors and lied to the government to cover it up. Santos’ trial was set to begin in a few weeks, but, on Friday, prosecutors asked presiding Judge Joanna Seybert to schedule a new pretrial meeting for Monday.
More from the Times:
Prosecutors painted Mr. Santos’s campaign as so desperate for cash that it turned to lying, cheating and stealing to finance its operations. But they also assert a pattern of self-dealing, which saw Mr. Santos repeatedly using his campaign account as a personal piggy bank.
Prosecutors said Mr. Santos used stolen credit card information from one donor to take $11,000 for his personal use. He convinced other donors to give money to what he said was a super PAC supporting his campaign. Instead, he used some of the money to buy designer clothing and pay his personal credit card bills.
On top of all that, Santos’ former campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, previously admitted that she helped the Bernie Madoff of politics falsify a $500,000 loan to his campaign that never existed so he could qualify for financial and operational support from the Republican Party. Marks pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to defraud the United States in October and is now facing between three and four years in prison.
HipHopWired Featured Video
Source: Shareif Ziyadat / Getty
Sean “Diddy” Combs is being investigated by the Feds. Reportedly, the disgraced Hip-Hop mogul is the subject of a federal criminal investigation, surely tied to the raids on his homes back in March 2024.
NBC News reports that Diddy’s legal team was notified last week that their client is being investigated by the Southern District of New York (SDNY). Although their sources indicated that a federal grand jury has been empaneled, there is no indication as to what the potential charges may be and when they will land, yet. The source also said that Combs had yet to receive a formal target letter from the SDNY.
This latest development comes a few months after Diddy’s homes in Miami and Los Angeles were raided simultaneously as part of an investigation into alleged sex trafficking and illegal firearms, amongst other crimes. Recently, Diddy put the same Los Angeles home that was raided on the market. TMZ reports he’s seeking $70M for the Holmby Hills home after paying $40M for it back in 2014.
Combs’ fall from grace can be pinpointed to when in November 2023 his ex-girlfriend and former Bad Boy artist Cassie Ventura filed a lawsuit accusing him of years of physical and sexual abuse. The suit was settled a day later, but the dam was broken, with more alleged victims coming forward with lawsuits of their own in the weeks and months since. Diddy would vehemently deny any wrongdoing, but in May 2024, CNN obtained a video that showed him brutally beating Cassie in a Los Angeles hotel’s hallway. The assault was just as what Cassie had described in her lawsuit.
Diddy then took to Instagram to deliver a widely criticized apology video. In the month since Cassie’s initial lawsuit, entities have been cutting ties with Diddy, including Revolt (where he once served as Chairman of the company he founded), Hulu (which dropped a planned reality show) and Howard University (which rescinded his honorary degree).
HipHopWired Featured Video
Source: @upscalecracc / Instagram
Sad news coming out of the sneaker community as well-known sneaker reseller to celebrities Javier Osorio-Mejia of Bayonne, NJ was reportedly shot and killed on Tuesday (June 25) in what police assume was a botched robbery attempt in New York City.
According to Fox5NY, the shooting occurred around 5:15 am on Greene Street in Soho and though it seems like a robbery attempt gone wrong, the men who accosted Meija shot him and fled the scene without taking any of his cash or his brand new Range Rover which was left behind at the scene. According to reports, Javier Osorio-Mejia was shot three times in the right leg before he was rushed to Bellevue Hospital where he passed away.
Known for selling exclusive high-end sneakers to celebrities and everyday sneakerheads alike, Meija built a name for himself over the years in the sneaker community, so when news of his shooting hit the internet, many eyebrows were raised and hearts broken.
Fox5NY reports:
NYPD detectives and crime scene investigators spent many hours going over the scene in search of clues. Sources told FOX 5 NY’s Lisa Evers significant ballistic evidence was recovered from the apparent ambush.
Detectives also recovered cash that was left on the ground, along with the victim’s trademark lime green Nike sneakers.
“I’m just devastated and I just want everyone to know he was a good person. He wasnt involved in no foul stuff, he was a humble dude, he helped a lot of people,” one of Osorio-Mejia’s friends said.
No arrests have been made. The motive behind the shooting was unknown at the time.
As detectives continued their work, friends gathered to mourn the loss of a rising businessman and support each other.
When news of his passing hit social media many of Meija’s friends and colleagues in the sneaker community took to his last post to express their love and condolences as he was beloved by many in the game.
Rest In Power, King.
HipHopWired Featured Video
Source: Eduardo Frederiksen / Getty / Atlanta Bus Hijacking
A scene reminiscent of the film SPEED starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock went down in Atlanta, and it also had a plot twist not even Tyler Perry would think of for one of his films.
Spotted on TMZ, an Atlanta city bus was hijacked by a crook, holding the driver at gunpoint and taking passengers hostage, leading ATL police on a high-speed chase that left one person dead.
Thanks to aerial footage, viewers were locked in as law enforcement was in hot pursuit of the bus as it plowed through Atlanta traffic, smashing civilian vehicles, including cop cars, in a chase that went on for miles on Tuesday.
The suspect, Joseph Grier, a convicted felon with 19 prior arrests, commanded the bus driver, Ernst Antoine, who was only on the job for three months, to drive after shooting and killing a passenger.
Speaking exclusively with ABC’s Good Morning America, Antoine said he was “ready to die” for the bus passengers and felt his handling of the situation “was right because people always coming first.”
When police finally got the bus to stop, the hostages ran for safety, and the suspect was immediately taken into custody, but that part didn’t play out so smoothly.
Speaking with PEOPLE, a passenger revealed that Grier “threw his gun and tried to disguise himself as one of the victims.”
When Antoine got off the bus, police mistook him for the suspect he revealed before pointing the cops in the right direction.
“When I get out, the police point the gun on me. I said, ‘No, I’m not the killer. I’m the driver.’ And they asked me, ‘Who is the killer?’ I say, ‘Him,’” Antoine told GMA.
This Bus Hijacking Is The Most Atlanta Thing Ever
The hijacking only gets more interesting. Not too long after the incident, an interview featuring Grier talking to reporters following a shooting at the Peachtree Center, leaving four people shot, surfaced.
In the interview, Grier discussed what he witnessed at the shooting before later boarding the bus and getting into a fight with another passenger.
Another passenger on the bus with a gun attempted to stop the fight, leading to Grier stealing the gun and shooting and killing the person trying to break up the fight.
As for his reasoning for his behavior, Grier, 39, claims he has bipolar disorder and has been off his meds for weeks.
We shall see how this plays out.