A Georgia man was booked Tuesday on suspicion of murdering up-and-coming Atlanta rapper Dolla in a brazen, broad daylight shooting outside an upscale West Hollywood mall.
Dolla, 21, was a popular protégé of chart-topping hip hop singer Akon, rapped on a 2007 single with T-Pain and was in Los Angeles working on a new album with Akon's Konvict Muzik label.
The suspect, Aubrey Louis Berry, 23, shot Dolla in the head at around 3 p.m. Monday in the parking area of the popular Beverly Center mall, cops said.
He fled the scene before officers arrived but was taken into custody less than two hours later at LAX airport.
"He was carrying a loaded firearm in the ticketing area when officers walked up and said 'Do you know what this is all about?' He got up, and said 'Yes I do. I have a gun in my waistband, don't shoot," Sgt. Jim Holcomb of the Los Angeles World Airports Police told the Daily News.
Holcomb said airport authorities got a description of the suspect around 4 p.m. Monday, and an unarmed traffic officer spotted Berry about 15 minutes later.
A woman entered the same terminal and said she was Berry's girlfriend, Holcomb said. Police questioned the woman and also were investigating a car returned to a Hertz rental lot at the airport that may have been the getaway vehicle, he said.
Dolla, whose real name is Roderick Anthony Burton, was waiting in the mall's parking valet area with another rapper, D.J. Shabbazz, when the shooting took place, Dolla's publicist Sue Vannasing told the Los Angeles Times.
She said Dolla had been involved in an altercation with other passengers on a recent flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles, but it's not clear if that incident was related to the shooting.
Cops have not released a motive.
Source: NY Daily News
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