YNW Melly, a Florida rapper, has reportedly tested positive for COVID-19 while in the Broward County Jail.
Melly, whose real name is Jamell Maurice Demons, is being held on murder charges at the Miami-area jail, according to the Miami Herald. According to a series of posts on the "Mixed Personalities" rapper's Instagram, he has tested positive for the virus.
In a series of posts, the person managing Demons’ Instagram page wrote that the hip-hop artist needs better care and he hopes for “support and to recover soon,” adding the hashtag #prayformelly.
“Melly has tested positive for COVID-19 today while awaiting his trial in Broward County Jail. He’ll be filing a motion for restricted release in hopes of better care due to any jails not being prepared to treat this new virus,” the Instagram post reads.
In a later post to his nearly 3.5 million followers, the motion previously mentioned is featured in a screen grab. The motion calls for the rapper to receive an emergency release for medical care.
Criminal justice advocates have rallied for releasing certain inmates from prisons across the country because prisons and jails have been prone to amplifying infectious disease such as COVID-19.
Some states and cities have taken actions to reduce the number of inmates in jails, according to the Prison Policy Initiative. San Francisco and Boulder, Colorado, have taken moves toward releasing people held pretrial, with limited time left on their sentence, and charged with non-violent offenses. Courts in Hamilton County and Cuyahoga County, Ohio, have started issuing court orders and conducting special hearings to increase the number of people released from local jails, according to PPI.
YNW Melly, who collaborated with the late Juice WRLD on the hit “Suicidal,” has been incarcerated since mid-February 2019, according to the Herald. Miramar police arrested him on charges related to the shooting deaths of Anthony “YNW Sakchaser” Williams and Christopher “YNW Juvy” Thomas.
There’s no word whether the filed motion had been answered as of Friday evening.
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