DNA evidence is hard to overcome, so Taxstone better have some good lawyers.
Rapper Troy Ave’s defense in the shooting that happened at T.I.’s concert was that someone was shooting at him (Ave was shot in the leg) and killed his bodyguard Ronald McPhatter, when he picked up the dropped gun and started shooting back.
The DNA evidence seems to back out that theory.
Here is the breakdown from the NY Times.
A hip-hop podcast host who feuded for years with the Brooklyn rapper Troy Ave was arrested on Monday on a federal weapons possession charge in connection with a shooting last year in which the rapper’s bodyguard was killed.
DNA believed to belong to the podcast host, Daryl Campbell, 31, who is known as Taxstone, was found on the trigger, hand grip and magazine of the 9-millimeter Kel-Tec semiautomatic handgun that was used in the shooting in the V.I.P. green room of a crowded Manhattan concert venue, a federal complaint says.
Mr. Campbell had the gun before the shooting, and videos show him coming into the green room before the gunfire and then fleeing, the complaint says. In front of him was the bodyguard, Ronald McPhatter. Behind Mr. Campbell was a person who is not named in the complaint, but who appears to be Troy Ave — whose real name is Roland Collins — based on earlier police accounts. Wounded in the legs, Mr. Collins was holding the Kel-Tec gun and firing it toward a fleeing Mr. Campbell.
Mr. McPhatter was fatally shot in the chest at close range. The gun also had his and Mr. Collins’s D.N.A., and it was later found in a van that transported Mr. Collins to the hospital. Two bystanders were also wounded at the venue, Irving Plaza, where the rapper T.I. was set to perform. Mr. Collins pleaded not guilty in June to attempted second-degree murder and other charges.
This is a federal crime which could mean a lengthy jail sentence for Taxstone.