Opening statements are expected Tuesday in the trials of four of five men accused in the shooting death of a rapper known as “Lil Phat” in what appeared to be a dispute over stolen marijuana.
The rapper, whose name is Melvin Vernell III, was fatally shot June 7, 2012, outside Northside Hospital in Sandy Springs.
One of the men on trial is rapper Gary Bradford who goes by “El Dorado Red.” Another was a point guard at San Francisco State University, Decensea Xavier White, also known as Griz. The other two going on trial are Maurice Dewayne Conner and Deandre Washington.
The fifth man — who will be tried separately — is a former Russian mafia member who became an FBI informant, Mani Chulpayev.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys took all of Monday to question prospective jurors and are expected to continue first thing Tuesday.
According to the indictment and other records, 19-year-old Vernell was shot while sitting in an Audi A7 on a parking ramp at Northside Hospital, where his girlfriend was in labor with his child. Allegedly, he was shot by two men hired to do the job. Read more on the shooting in this article.
“I termed it an assassination,” Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard told Channel 2 Action News reporter Jim Strickland about the killing and the motives. There may have been two motives, he said.
Two days before he was killed, Vernell was pulled over for speeding while driving a stolen BMW. He told police he had leased it Chulpayev.
Chulpayev had moved to Atlanta and opened a luxury car business after helping federal authorities win dozens of convictions against members of European crime groups. Though he admitted to a variety of crimes — trafficking women from Russia to work as prostitutes and running a fraud scheme — he was sentenced to time served. Federal Judge Nina Gershon, in his sentencing in 2002, called Chulpayev’s crimes “chilling and inhuman” but said he was also “one of the most valuable witnesses in the history of the government’s battle against Russian organized crime.”
White and Bradford, a member of the Bang Get Money street gang in Montgomery, were allegedly angry with Vernell because he had stolen some of their marijuana so they allegedly hired Conner and Washington, also a member of BGM, for $10,000 to kill him.
They found Vernell because Chulpayev allegedly accessed the GPS on the Audi and told the two where they could find him.
”He was stalked by these two hit men. It was planned,” Howard told Channel 2 Action News.
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