Robert Hoobler, the police officer who save rapper Lil Wayne’s life after a failed suicide attempt as a child has passed away in New Orleans.
Hoobler was found dead Friday in his Old Jefferson home, his friends tell Nola.com.
The retired cop battled health problems following a serious car accident years ago, and uncontrolled type 1 diabetes which led to both of his legs being amputated.
Lil Wayne had offered financial support to Hoobler who saved his life following a suicide attempt at age 12.
In an interview last year on Uncomfortable Conversations, the rapper, born Dwayne Carter Jr., recalled using a 9mm pistol in his mother’s apartment to shoot himself in 1994.
“I knew where she put her gun and it was in her bedroom. And so I went in her bedroom, grabbed the gun,” he said.
Weezy said he pointed the gun at his head but then changed his mind and put it to his chest instead because he “got a little too scared.”
“I knew I had a mental health problem when I pulled the trigger,” he said.
Hoobler was the first officer to arrive at the scene.
Wayne remembers Hoobler, a white police officer, showing more compassion for him than the Black cops on the scene.
Wayne said Hoobler told the other cops to stop searching for drugs in the room and call an ambulance.
“Save the baby!” Hoobler yelled.
“I was spitting all in his face, blood and everything, and all I was trying to tell [him] was I’m not a baby. He kept saying, ‘Do you not see the f**king baby on the ground with a hole in his chest?'”
“He was screaming at them (cops)… and he must’ve been the boss because they all came in the room and was like, ‘Oh sorry boss, we called the ambulance.'”
There was no ambulance available, so Hoobler ordered a cop to back his police cruiser up to the residence.
He carried Wayne to the patrol cruiser and gently placed the bleeding boy across his lap in the backseat.
One officer blocked traffic at major intersections, while another officer rushed Hoobler and Wayne to a nearby hospital.
The two men bumped into each other again in 2019. Wayne offered to provide financial support for Hoobler.
“I met him years later and he said to me, ‘I’m just happy to see I saved a life that mattered.'”
Weezy (pictured at age 14 with mentor Birdman) said he was depressed because his mother, Jacita, banned him from rapping.
Wayne recalled the suicide attempt on his track, “London Roads.”
At the time, Wayne was under the assumption that Hoobler was deceased.
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Ms. Cita, I remember goin’ in your gun drawer
Puttin’ it to my chest and missin’ my heart by centimeters
Oh Lord, I remember dyin’ on her room floor
And wakin’ up in some police’s arms, he died recent
So I hope Heaven made more room for him, and I hope he see me
‘Cause if he didn’t save that lil boy, there’d be no Weezy
Oh Lord.
