After his teen son was slapped by rapper Tony Yayo in 2007, hip-hop mogul James “Jimmy Henchman” Rosemond issued a cold-blooded order: someone from Yayo’s hip-hop group G-Unit “had to die,” prosecutors said Monday.
“His goal was to make sure that members of G-Unit had to carry a coffin,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Samson Enzer told jurors during opening statements of Rosemond’s murder-for-hire trial in Manhattan federal court.
“The attack on Rosemond’s son,” he noted, “was an attack on Rosemond.”
The 49-year-old Rosemond — who was sentenced to life in prison last year for running a multi-million dollar drug empire — and longtime associate Rodney Johnson are charged with orchestrating the 2009 Bronx murder of Lowell Fletcher, a member of the notorious Bloods street gang who was also an associate of Yayo and fellow G-Unit founder 50 Cent.
The March 2007 attack on Rosemond’s then-14-year-old son occurred after Yayo, 50 Cent and others in the G-Unit crew spotted him in Manhattan wearing a shirt that advertised his father’s rival music management company Czar Entertainment, police sources said.
Yayo, whose real name is Marvin Bernard, was harassing the kid at the direction of 50 Cent, allegedly showing a gun tucked into his waist. He then pushed the kid up against a wall, started asking him why he was wearing the shirt and smacked him.
For two years after the assault, Rosemond tried to make good on his vendetta, prosecutors said.
This included organizing at least three failed drive-by shootings aimed at G-Unit associates, including one outside radio station Hot 97’s offices in Manhattan.
Prosecutors say Rosemond paid off Brian “Slim” McCleod with a “slab” of cocaine worth $30,000 to lure Fletcher to a Bronx street corner in September 2009 where fellow thug Derrick “D” Grant pumped bullets into Fletcher. Johnson was on the scene supervising nearby, prosecutors said.
“On the surface and in the public eye, James Rosemond was an executive in the music industry,” Enzer said. “But beneath the surface and in reality, Rosemond was a ruthless criminal who ran his rap business like a street gang.”
Rosemond’s lawyer, J. Bruce Maffeo, told jurors he believes the government’s case is flawed because it relies heavily on the testimony of four men – including McCleod and Rosemond – who are singing to the feds out of desperation to avoid life in prison for a slew of crimes.
He questioned how jurors could find the testimony “credible and believable” considering they allegedly “lied to prosecutors” during the course of the investigation by recanting their stories to suit their purposes.
Fletcher’s sister, Leta Bethel, of Brooklyn, described her brother as a member of the Bloods who began working for Yayo nearly a decade ago. She said they were once pretty tight, adding that Fletcher even lived with the rap star at his Hamptons home between 2006 and 2007.
Rosemond – who has long been suspected of involvement in the 1994 non-fatal shooting of slain rap icon Tupac Shakur in Manhattan – once mingled with the likes of Jay-Z, Akon and Sean Combs.
He was found guilty by a federal jury in Brooklyn last year of using his thriving record label as a front for a coast-to-coast cocaine ring.