Two new suspects charged in PnB Rock murder case
Two new suspects have been charged in the PnB Rock murder case.
Rock – real name Rakim Hasheem Allen – was fatally shot at South Los Angeles’ Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles restaurant on September 12 last year while he was at the eatery with his girlfriend, Stephanie Sibounheuang.
The new suspects, Tremont Navon Jones and Wynisha Evans were both arrested in May in connection and have since been charged.
The former appeared in custody at a Compton courthouse yesterday (October 31) for a hearing alongside Freddie Trone, the alleged getaway driver and father of his 17-year-old son who was previously charged with gunning down PnB Rock inside the restaurant, reports Rolling Stone.
Authorities allege the juvenile pulled the trigger, but they also charged his father with murder too, casting him as the mastermind of the deadly robbery. Freddie Trone’s wife Shauntel Trone, was also charged as an accessory after the fact.
Jones was charged with two counts of robbery, one count of conspiring to rob the rapper inside the restaurant and one count of illegal possession of a firearm.
Evans has also since been charged with being an accessory after the fact. Prosecutors allege she drove Freddie Trone from Los Angeles to Las Vegas after the murder to help him escape a public manhunt, according to court filings.
Both Jones and Evans have pleaded not guilty as have Freddie and Shauntel Trone.
In a motion filed on Sunday (September 29) to dismiss Jones’ charges, his defence lawyer David Haas quoted from a probable cause hearing held last August in which a police officer testified that Jones and PnB Rock “exchanged a fist bump” when the rapper first entered the restaurant with his girlfriend, Stephanie Sibounheuang.
The motion claims the detective told the court that Jones met up with Freddie Trone outside the restaurant a short time later, before the shooting, and appeared to hand over an object that he retrieved from his sedan [saloon] and “covered with a towel.”
Jones also allegedly dialled Trone’s phone number around the time of the killing, the detective testified.
Haas, pushed back against the prosecution’s theory in his dismissal motion. “There was no testimony that Mr. Jones communicated directly with the (the alleged juvenile shooter) at any time before, during or after the crime. There was also no testimony that Mr. Jones contacted Mr. Freddie Trone to make him aware of Mr. Allen’s presence inside Roscoe’s,” Haas wrote.
He added: “The additional claim that Mr. Jones supplied Mr. Freddie Trone with the firearm is pure speculation.”
At the hearing, in a motion to lower her bond filed earlier this month, Evans’ defence lawyer Conrad Barrington, also said she was a longtime friend of Freddie Trone who agreed to drive him to Las Vegas after the murder because she was “terrified” he was going to be shot by police.
“She admits that she drove him to Las Vegas to prevent him from being killed,” the filing added.
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