A D.C. high school staff member who works with troubled students was arrested Wednesday in the fatal shooting of a young rap artist two years ago in Southeast Washington, according to police and school officials.
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Marcel Gavin, 34, was arrested at Dunbar High School, according to a D.C. police spokesman, and was charged with first-degree murder while armed. A school spokesman confirmed that Gavin works at Dunbar; public records show he assists students with behavioral health issues.
Police said they also charged John Wilkins, 32, of Temple Hills, Md., with first-degree murder in the June 14, 2020, killing of Albert Smith Jr., who, according to his mother, was visiting the District to make a rap video. He grew up in Tennessee but also had an address in Atlanta.
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Smith, 21, performed under the name CEO Bezzal, his family said, and had produced many videos through a recording company in Miami. He performed his biggest hit, “Rockstar,” in a gritty video in which money and guns are flashed.
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His mother, Lanita Jefferson, 42, remembered Smith as a “sweet person” who played youth football and graduated from a high school in Memphis. He also lived for a time in the small town of Grand Junction, Tenn.
“He was a good, cool kid,” Jefferson said on Wednesday, shortly after a D.C. police homicide detective called her about the arrests. “Everybody loved him. He was one of a kind.” He had seven siblings and a son who is now 3 years old.
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“He was doing really well,” said Smith’s father, Albert Smith Sr., who lives in Grand Junction. “He had a promising future.”
He said his son had come to the District with a group of friends and his older brother. He said they had been involved in a high-stakes dice game, which police confirmed.
Jefferson said Smith’s brother and police told her he had won money in a dice game and then was targeted in a botched robbery attempt that ended in gunfire and nothing taken.
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Albert Smith Sr. said he was told by police that someone “just started shooting.”
Other rappers in the Memphis area took to social media to mourn Smith’s death. One wrote: “Streets Don’t Love Nobody Get U Some Rest Bro.”
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His mother said Smith knew the Billboard hit rap artist Adolph Robert Thornton Jr. known as Young Dolph, who was fatally shot in November at a Memphis cookie shop.
The attack on Smith occurred about 7:20 a.m. in the 1300 block of Congress Street SE, in the Congress Heights neighborhood. Another man from Memphis was wounded in the shooting and survived, police said.
Smith’s parents said they are grateful for the arrests. “Time helps,” the 51-year-old Albert Smith Sr. said. “For the most part, we’re just praying, hoping to get some justice.”
Gavin and Wilkins could make initial appearances in D.C. Superior Court on Thursday, when additional information in the arrest affidavit would be made public.
It could not immediately be determined whether the men have attorneys.