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'I had nothing to do with it' says man charged with sending son to kill rapper PnB Rock

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'I had nothing to do with it' says man charged with sending son to kill rapper PnB Rock
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'I had nothing to do with it' says man charged with sending son to kill rapper PnB Rock

2024-08-06 08:43 Last Updated At:08:50

COMPTON, Calif. (AP) — A man charged with murder vehemently denied in court testimony that he sent his 17-year-old son into a Los Angeles restaurant in 2022 to rob and kill hip-hop star PnB Rock.

“I understand you're trying to put together your story,” Freddie Trone told a prosecutor during cross-examination in a Compton, California, courtroom at his trial Monday before closing arguments began. “I never had nothing to do with it. I wasn't there. I didn't tell nobody to do nothing. I didn't hand nobody no gun.”

Trone had not been asked directly about his guilt, but had grown increasingly frustrated with questioning from Deputy District Attorney Timothy Richardson and heatedly volunteered the denial.

“How is this relevant to trying to tie me to something?” Trone asked the prosecutor at one point. He later shouted, “for the fifth time!” after answering a question about encountering his son after the shooting.

The defense made the rare and risky move of putting the Trone, 42, on the stand as he faces one charge of murder, two counts of second-degree robbery and one count of conspiracy to commit robbery. He was the only defense witness called.

Trone acknowledged on the stand that the crimes were “heinous” and that his son, who is in the juvenile justice system and has not been tried, was “dangerous.”

Richardson seized on both during his closing argument, saying, “But you send your 17-year-old son with knowledge of the problems he possesses to do this?”

Richardson repeatedly spoke with extra emphasis, as if in disbelief, when he said to jurors, “his son” or “his biological son.”

The Associated Press does not typically name minors who are accused of crimes.

PnB Rock, the Philadelphia rapper whose legal name is Rakim Allen, was best known for his 2016 hit “Selfish” and for guest appearances on other artists’ songs such as YFN Lucci’s “Everyday We Lit” and Ed Sheeran’s “Cross Me” with Chance the Rapper.

Richardson emphasized to jurors that a non-shooter can be guilty of felony murder when they are a “major participant” who acted with “reckless indifference to human life.”

“A robbery is inherently dangerous,” Richardson said. “It's up close and personal.”

The prosecutor then walked the jurors through the events of Sept. 12, 2022, replaying clips from the surveillance video the case heavily relied on.

Video showed Trone in the parking lot of a South Los Angeles Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles restaurant about 30 minutes before the killing. Trone testified that he had reason to be there because he was drumming up business for his nearby beauty shop.

Richardson showed a surveillance image of Trone's friend and co-defendant, Tremont Jones, fist-bumping Allen, whose arm had valuable pieces of jewelry he had.

“Was there motive? Yes!” Richardson said. “Half-a-million dollar worth!”

Prosecutors allege Jones tipped Trone off to the rapper's presence and his jewelry. Jones has pleaded guilty to two counts of robbery and one count of conspiracy.

Richardson showed video from minutes later of Trone's Buick Enclave dropping off the boy near the restaurant and picking him up a few minutes later. Trone testified that his keys and Buick had disappeared before the shooting and he later found his son and the SUV with three other young men.

The defense, which gives its closing on Tuesday, plans to argue that video of the teen getting in and out of the back of the car rather than the passenger seat was evidence that there were several people inside.

The prosecutor also showed video from inside the restaurant during the shooting, the actual killing is behind a dividing wall and mostly not visible.

Allen's mother, who was in the audience often wiping away tears, looked away during the video and left the courtroom before Richardson showed jurors a medical examiner's photo of Allen after his death.

Witnesses testified that a person in a ski mask walked up, demanded their jewelry, then fired. Allen was shot once in the chest and twice in the back as he fell to the ground. A gun was found on him, but prosecutors say it was not pulled or fired.

Trone's attorney, Winston McKesson, plans to emphasize that the prosecution is overreaching, with no evidence of communications between Trone and Jones where they discuss Allen or a robbery, no evidence Trone was prompted to be at the scene, and no video showing he was driver of the Buick at the time of the killing. He also plans to stress that no jewelry or gun has been recovered.

He criticized prosecutors for how quickly and harshly their charges against Trone came, without investigators exploring more possibilities.

"Had my defendant not lived in this area, had he not been African American, there's no way they would've filed murder charges," McKesson said outside court Monday. “Had this crime been in Beverly Hills, he would've been charged as an accessory after the fact and that's it.”

FILE - Philadelphia rapper PnB Rock performs at the 2018 Firefly Music Festival in Dover, Del., June 16, 2018. (Photo by Owen Sweeney/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - Philadelphia rapper PnB Rock performs at the 2018 Firefly Music Festival in Dover, Del., June 16, 2018. (Photo by Owen Sweeney/Invision/AP, File)

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The Gulf of Whatnow? Mapmakers grapple with Trump's geographic renaming plans

2025-01-23 15:31 Last Updated At:15:40

What's in a name change, after all?

The water bordered by the Southern United States, Mexico and Cuba will be critical to shipping lanes and vacationers whether it’s called the Gulf of Mexico, as it has been for four centuries, or the Gulf of America, as President Donald Trump ordered this week. North America’s highest mountain peak will still loom above Alaska whether it’s called Mt. Denali, as ordered by former President Barack Obama in 2015, or changed back to Mt. McKinley as Trump also decreed.

But Trump's territorial assertions, in line with his “America First” worldview, sparked a round of rethinking by mapmakers and teachers, snark on social media and sarcasm by at least one other world leader. And though Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis put the Trumpian “Gulf of America” on an official document and some other gulf-adjacent states were considering doing the same, it was not clear how many others would follow Trump's lead.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum joked that if Trump went ahead with the renaming, her country would rename North America “Mexican America.” On Tuesday, she toned it down: “For us and for the entire world it will continue to be called the Gulf of Mexico.”

Map lines are inherently political. After all, they're representations of the places that are important to human beings — and those priorities can be delicate and contentious, even more so in a globalized world.

There’s no agreed-upon scheme to name boundaries and features across the Earth.

“Denali” is the mountain's preferred name for Alaska Natives, while “McKinley" is a tribute to President William McKinley, designated in the late 19th century by a gold prospector. China sees Taiwan as its own territory, and the countries surrounding what the United States calls the South China Sea have multiple names for the same body of water.

The Persian Gulf has been widely known by that name since the 16th century, although usage of “Gulf” and “Arabian Gulf” is dominant in many countries in the Middle East. The government of Iran — formerly Persia — threatened to sue Google in 2012 over the company’s decision not to label the body of water at all on its maps. Many Arab countries don’t recognize Israel and instead call it Palestine. And in many official releases, Israel calls the occupied West Bank by its biblical name, “Judea and Samaria.”

Americans and Mexicans diverge on what to call another key body of water, the river that forms the border between Texas and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas. Americans call it the Rio Grande; Mexicans call it the Rio Bravo.

Trump's executive order — titled “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness” — concludes thusly: “It is in the national interest to promote the extraordinary heritage of our Nation and ensure future generations of American citizens celebrate the legacy of our American heroes. The naming of our national treasures, including breathtaking natural wonders and historic works of art, should honor the contributions of visionary and patriotic Americans in our Nation’s rich past.”

But what to call the gulf with the 3,700-mile coastline?

“It is, I suppose, an internationally recognized sea, but (to be honest), a situation like this has never come up before so I need to confirm the appropriate convention,” said Peter Bellerby, who said he was talking over the issue with the cartographers at his London company, Bellerby & Co. Globemakers. “If, for instance, he wanted to change the Atlantic Ocean to the American Ocean, we would probably just ignore it."

As of Wednesday night, map applications for Google and Apple still called the mountain and the gulf by their old names. Spokespersons for those platforms did not immediately respond to emailed questions.

A spokesperson for National Geographic, one of the most prominent map makers in the U.S., said this week that the company does not comment on individual cases and referred questions to a statement on its web site, which reads in part that it "strives to be apolitical, to consult multiple authoritative sources, and to make independent decisions based on extensive research.” National Geographic also has a policy of including explanatory notes for place names in dispute, citing as an example a body of water between Japan and the Korean peninsula, referred to as the Sea of Japan by the Japanese and the East Sea by Koreans.

In discussion on social media, one thread noted that the Sears Tower in Chicago was renamed the Willis Tower in 2009, though it's still commonly known by its original moniker. Pennsylvania's capital, Harrisburg, renamed its Market Street to Martin Luther King Boulevard and then switched back to Market Street several years later — with loud complaints both times. In 2017, New York's Tappan Zee Bridge was renamed for the late Gov. Mario Cuomo to great controversy. The new name appears on maps, but “no one calls it that,” noted another user.

“Are we going to start teaching this as the name of the body of water?” asked one Reddit poster on Tuesday.

“I guess you can tell students that SOME PEOPLE want to rename this body of water the Gulf of America, but everyone else in the world calls it the Gulf of Mexico,” came one answer. “Cover all your bases — they know the reality-based name, but also the wannabe name as well.”

Wrote another user: “I'll call it the Gulf of America when I'm forced to call the Tappan Zee the Mario Cuomo Bridge, which is to say never.”

FILE - President Donald Trump speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)

FILE - President Donald Trump speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)

FILE - Peter Bellerby, the founder of Bellerby & Co. Globemakers, holds a globe at a studio in London, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)

FILE - Peter Bellerby, the founder of Bellerby & Co. Globemakers, holds a globe at a studio in London, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)

FILE - A boat is seen on the Susitna River near Talkeetna, Alaska, on Sunday, June 13, 2021, with Denali in the background. Denali, the tallest mountain on the North American continent, is located about 60 miles northwest of Talkeetna. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen, File)

FILE - A boat is seen on the Susitna River near Talkeetna, Alaska, on Sunday, June 13, 2021, with Denali in the background. Denali, the tallest mountain on the North American continent, is located about 60 miles northwest of Talkeetna. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen, File)

FILE - The water in the Gulf of Mexico appears bluer than usual off of East Beach, Saturday, June 24, 2023, in Galveston, Texas. (Jill Karnicki/Houston Chronicle via AP, File)

FILE - The water in the Gulf of Mexico appears bluer than usual off of East Beach, Saturday, June 24, 2023, in Galveston, Texas. (Jill Karnicki/Houston Chronicle via AP, File)

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