The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is investigating why the woman who drove the getaway car after rapper Nipsey Hussle’s shooting was sent home when she turned herself in to police.
The unidentified woman turned herself in to police in the days after her boyfriend, Eric Holder fatally shot the rapper outside his clothing store in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Los Angeles on March 31.
Page Six reports the driver testified to a grand jury that she went to the 77th Street police station after seeing her car on the news.
The woman and Holder were publicly identified on Instagram.com. Side-by-side photos of the pair were circulated on Instagram.com by gang members before Holder was arrested in Bellflower, California.
During her grand jury testimony, the woman said she drove Holder to the strip mall where the rapper owned several businesses including a clothing store and fast food restaurant.
Holder, 29, had approached Hussle, who was with a larger group of men, and the two men chatted for about 4 minutes. At some point the conversation turned to snitching.
“Apparently, the conversation had something to do with [Hussle] telling Mr. Holder that word on the street was that Mr. Holder was snitching,” Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney told the grand jury. “The conversation wasn’t particularly intense. It wasn’t particularly belligerent.”
Holder was overheard telling Hussle, “So you’ve never snitched?” or “Haven’t you snitched?”
According to the 515-page court document, Holder and the woman departed, and, while in the car, Holder pulled out a gun and told the woman to drive around the block. He directed her to pull into an alley and told her he’d be right back.
Surveillance video footage from a nearby business shows Holder walk up to Hussle and fire multiple rounds at him from two different guns.
Holder jumped back into the car and ordered the woman to drive away. When she asked what happened, he told her to drive or he would slap her.
“I didn’t do anything. I didn’t know this boy was gonna do this,” the woman said she told her mother after driving Holder away from the strip mall where the shooting occurred.
But when the woman and her mother went to the police station, a confused desk officer sent them away.
The woman said the officer told them, “Don’t worry about it,” according to the grand jury transcript, obtained by Page Six.
“Don’t listen to the news,” the officer told them.
The woman said her mom called police again, and this time she spoke with detectives on the case who urged them to come in.
LAPD Detective Cedric Washington confirmed that the woman had initially been dismissed.
“That is true, according to the desk officer that I spoke to about it,” Washington said.
Deputy District Attorney John McKinney responded that the desk officer must have missed a briefing in the police chief’s press conference that day, and he was confused when the mother and daughter came in to police headquarters.
LAPD spokesman Josh Rubenstein told the Los Angeles Times last week that the desk officer thought the woman was reporting that someone was recording video of her car on TV.
The LAPD has launched a probe into why the woman was turned away. The woman and her mother have been offered police protection. The driver’s photo is still being circulated on social media.
