LOS ANGELES — The city already had an infamous history for rappers, and at least two more artists have been murdered here in the past month.
Latauriisha O’Brien, 32, who went by the name “Half Ounce,” was found shot to death late Monday, police and his family said, the latest of several rap notables murdered in Los Angeles in the past two years.
Los Angeles Police Department said officers responded to multiple shots fired around 11:30 a.m. in the Koreatown neighborhood that found a man who had shot dead in front of an apartment building.
The murdered man’s family has confirmed that NBC Los Angeles that the murdered person was O’Brien, a father of three who worked at UPS while attending school.
The Los Angeles County coroner’s office also confirmed that O’Brien was the victim. An investigation was awaited Tuesday, an office spokesperson said.
Police officials said the investigation was still in its infancy and a motive was unknown. Investigators are looking for a man in dark clothes who fled south from the New Hampshire Avenue crime scene in a dark SUV.
Monday’s murder occurred three weeks after rapper PnB Rock was shot and killed in a botched robbery of Roscoe’s Chicken ‘N Waffles in South Los Angeles. Three people, including a 17-year-old and his father, have been arrested and charged with the September 12 murder.
In December, rapper Drakeo the Ruler, whose real name was Darrell Caldwell, died after being stabbed during a fight behind the main stage at the Banc of California Stadium during the Once Upon a Time in LA music festival.
Brooklyn, New York, rapper Pop Smoke, whose real name was Bashar Barakah Jackson, was shot and killed in a reported break-in in Los Angeles on February 19, 2020, while in Los Angeles on a business trip.
Four people, two of whom were minors, were prosecuted in that case.
In March 2019, Grammy-nominated rapper Nipsey Hussle was shot dead outside his clothing store in South Los Angeles. In July, Eric R. Holder Jr. found guilty of first degree murder in Hussle’s murder.
It’s been 25 years since the rapper known as Notorious BIG and Biggie Smalls was shot in a car-to-car shooting on March 9, 1997.
The shooting of the rapper, whose real name was Christopher Wallace, has never been solved.
It happened after a party at the Petersen Auto Museum in the Mid City neighborhood of Los Angeles in what was believed to be the crescendo of a construction feud between East Coast and West Coast rap artists.