A young man has been charged with murder in Florida after police say he shot his alleged victim in the back and later bragged about it in a rap song he recorded.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said 19-year-old La’Darion Chandler shot 33-year-old John McGee in the back at a neighborhood in the city of Lakeland on Dec. 17 of last year.
Both men were described as rival gang members and the shooting followed an argument.
McGee died weeks later in a hospital after Judd said he refused to take life-saving medication. The victim also allegedly refused to cooperate in his own shooting investigation.
Judd told reporters he suspected it was because McGee wanted to heal from his wounds and go after Chandler on his own, WTVT-TV reported.
Investigators had already eyed Chandler as a suspect after McGee died, but Judd said they were aided when the teen recently posted a rap video on social media in which he bragged about a murder where he shot his victim in the back.
The sheriff’s department shared a short clip of the song and video on its YouTube page.
WARNING: The following video contains vulgar language some viewers might find offensive
The department also shared some of the song’s lyrics:
“…N***a tried to run
I hit his back
Though I shoot like a mac
Dirt a** dead n***s knowing where to find me at…”
Judd ripped into Chandler as a bad rapper in comments to the local media.
“He’s not much of a rapper,” Judd said, according to the TV station. “My rapper expert says he doesn’t sing well. He doesn’t move well. He’s just a terrible rapper.
Judd continued, “But, he’s a stupid rapper. He not only makes a rap video about shooting somebody, but he also admits to shooting the guy in the back. I’m a coward rapper, that’s what I am. Watch me shoot the guy in the back.”
Chandler is charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of McGee. Judd said the alleged killer cried “like a baby” when he was arrested.
“When we laid that first-degree murder warrant on him, subsequent to that, he started crying like a baby that lost his pacifier, and ostensibly his gun was his pacifier,” Judd said. “He bragged that he carried a gun all the time, and he would shoot it at his rivals.”
In a media release, the sheriff said crime in Polk County is actually at a 51-year low.
A spike in recent gang-related violence, he said, led to the creation of a task force to go after the problem.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
