A young man who admitted a Juvenile Court petition charging him with murdering rapper Pop Smoke during a home-invasion robbery in the Hollywood Hills has been sentenced to four years in county jail for distributing fentanyl while he was in a juvenile detention facility, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced.
Deijae Jester, now 21, was sentenced Thursday in connection with his no-contest plea in June to one felony count each of possession for sale of a controlled substance, bringing contraband into a jail and bringing or sending contraband into a juvenile hall or camp, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
Jester’s mother, Nickia Tyonia Randall, is also facing the same charges for allegedly attempting to pass two latex balls to him that contained fentanyl pills while visiting him at Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar last Dec. 14, according to the District Attorney’s Office, which noted that one of the balls was recovered and contained 25 fentanyl pills.
“Deijae Jester committed a devastating crime when he took the life of Pop Smoke,” District Attorney Nathan Hochman said in a statement announcing the sentence. “Because he was a juvenile, the law afforded him an opportunity for redemption.
“Instead of embracing that opportunity, he chose to traffic one of the deadliest drugs imaginable from inside a juvenile detention facility. He was given the chance at rehabilitation by serving seven years in a juvenile hall but he chose to smuggle in fentanyl.”
The young man — who was 15 at the time of Pop Smoke’s Feb. 19, 2020, killing — admitted a first-degree murder charge in 2023 stemming from the killing of the rapper, whose real name was Bashar Jackson, along with an allegation that he personally and intentionally discharged a firearm during the crime. He also admitted a home-invasion robbery count.
The judge urged the young man, who was 18 by that time, and a then-19-year-old co-defendant — the latter of whom admitted a Juvenile Court petition charging him with home-invasion robbery — to “make better choices” and to understand the pain they had caused, warning them in June 2023 that they could be on the road to state prison or a graveyard if they continued on the same path.