Rapper Lil Durk has been acquitted on federal charges for plotting to murder rival rapper Quando Rondo in a violent shooting in Los Angeles, which resulted in the killing of another man, officials said.
After three days of deliberation, jurors on Friday found Lil Durk, whose real name is Durk Devontay Banks, not guilty on five total counts, including stalking and masterminding a murder-for-hire plot orchestrated to kill Tyquian Bowman, a rival Atlanta rapper known as Quando Rondo.
Instead, the plot culminated in the death of Bowman’s cousin, 24-year-old Saviay’a Robinson, who was fatally shot in broad daylight just more than four years ago.
Banks’ co-defendants, Deandre Wilson and David Lindsey, meanwhile, were convicted of conspiracy to commit stalking, stalking using a dangerous weapon and stalking resulting in death. But both were also acquitted of murder for hire.
“We thank the jury for seeing there was no murder for hire,” Wilson’s attorney Craig Harbaugh said. “We are confident the remaining counts will not survive our pending motion for acquittal.”
Lil Durk was jailed for the killing in 2024 and remained in custody as of Saturday. He is still awaiting a related racketeering trial.
Prosecutors said the rapper wanted revenge after one of Bowman’s associates killed his close friend, Dayvon “King Von” Bennett, in 2020 at an Atlanta nightclub.
In response, prosecutors alleged he ordered and bankrolled a plot to kill Bowman. In August 2022, Durk, Wilson and Lindsey traveled to Los Angeles on the rapper’s dime, then followed Bowman around in the lead-up to the deadly shooting. On Aug. 19 that year, a group of gunmen fired on Bowman’s Escalade near the Beverly Center shopping mall in Los Angeles.
Bowman was injured, and his cousin, known as Lul Pab, was fatally struck.
Durk pleaded not guilty to all of the charges, and his attorneys argued the 33-year-old rapper was not involved in the deadly violence.
They alternatively argued it was Durk’s former personal assistant Kavon Grant who plotted to kill Bowman in an effort to impress his boss. Grant ultimately switched sides and testified for the government.
With News Wire Services