Police investigating the June shooting death of Julio Foolio have arrested four suspects in the popular Florida rapper’s slaying and are searching for a fifth, according to investigators.
Authorities said on Monday that members of two different gangs – ATK and 1200 – carried out the ambush which killed the 26-year-old musician, whose legal name was Charles Jones, while he was out celebrating his birthday in Tampa.
Sean Gathright, 18, as well as Isaiah Chance and Alicia Andrews, both 21, were jailed in the case on suspicion of murder over the weekend, Tampa police announced in a statement. Rashad Murphy, 30, then surrendered on similar charges early on Tuesday after a standoff with sheriff’s deputies, officials said in a post on X.
As of Tuesday, 27-year-old Davion Murphy remained wanted in connection with Jones’s murder, police said.
The rapper’s discography, dating back to 2017, has amassed tens of millions of streams. His brand of hard-edged yet emotional music earned him praise from fans – but it also made him enemies.
He feuded with rivals, whether on social media or through his songs. And one of his songs taunted a man who was shot to death while celebrating his birthday alongside two others in 2018.
Jones had advertised a weekend of birthday events on social media. He arrived at a Tampa hotel in a car on 23 June. Hotel surveillance camera footage showed attackers clad in black and wearing masks fire at Jones’s car with two rifles and a pistol.
The rapper died, and three others were wounded.
Police on Monday accused Rashad Murphy, Davion Murphy and Gathright of firing at Jones on the night of his death. Chance and Andrews allegedly followed the rapper’s entourage to two spots before the fatal shooting.
In addition to the hotel surveillance video, detectives said they used cellphone data as well as information from license plate readers to identify the suspects in Jones’s murder. They are all accused of traveling from Jacksonville to Tampa to kill the musician in retaliation for an ongoing quarrel between gangs in that region.
Police on Saturday captured Chance and Andrews at a home in Jacksonville and Gathright at a local shopping center. Rashad Murphy was arrested at a Jacksonville apartment late on Monday.
A statement from Lee Bercaw, Tampa police chief, said he hoped the arrests sent the message that the city his agency patrols “is not where you want to come to settle a dispute”. He also said he wished for the arrests to “provide some closure for … loved ones” of Jones.
In his biography on the music streaming service Spotify, Jones said he had previously survived “multiple attempts on [his] life”. He said he had been shot as a teenager and later grazed by a bullet in a 2021 drive-by attack that saw him fire a gun back in self-defense.
Jones recounted how he had lost 15 friends to violence before turning 20 and was striving to succeed despite “long-term imprisonment as a young adult”.
His mother, Sandrikas Mays, told the Tampa news outlet WFLA that she was relieved Jones’s alleged killers had been arrested. She also said she condemned the violence that victimized her son, saying it did not reflect on her as a nurse or her daughter – Jones’ sister – as a teacher.
“Please don’t say it comes from home because it doesn’t come from home,” Mays remarked to the outlet. “I have helped people in my city.”
