Young Scooter and The Next RICO

Two young Black men died Friday in Lakewood. One adds to our list of lost artists. The other may add to our list of indicted ones.

Kenneth Bailey, the Atlanta rapper Young Scooter, dead at 39.

When the headline reads “Atlanta rapper dies after running from officers,” it entices the reader to reduce the incident to a sign that street life in Atlanta carries lethal dangers; to simplify it and then to dismiss it.

But Kenneth Bailey, the rapper Young Scooter, did not lead a life that should have led to this death. And his friends say that the police response to a fake report of a kidnapping contributed to his death.

I don’t mean to suggest that someone has to be the next incarnation of Mister Rogers to merit sympathy. But I want to acknowledge the assumptions we make about rappers in Atlanta, given how frequently they and the people near them seem to meet tragic ends.

Those assumptions are misplaced here.

A 911 caller claimed that a woman had been dragged into a house and that gunshots had been fired, police said. That call led police to the quiet cul de sac in the Lakewood neighborhood in South Atlanta. The call appears on first pass to be a fabrication; police said no woman was found as a hostage at the residence.

I’ve requested a copy of 911 call recording and will add it to the story here when I get it.

“During the process of establishing the perimeter, two males fled out of the rear of the house,” said the Atlanta Police Department in its initial statement following Bailey’s death. “One male returned back into the house. The other male jumped two fences as he was fleeing. When officers located him on the other side of the fence, he appeared to have suffered an injury to his leg. Officers rendered aid, and he was transported to Grady Hospital, where he was pronounced deceased.”

APD’s statement elides over a delay in medical treatment that bears examination. A friend of Bailey’s who identified himself as Dee said police held the injured man for about 35 minutes before an ambulance arrived. Dee pointed at the bloodstains on the concrete car port of the house next door, where police held Young Scooter.

“After 15 minutes, another police car pulled up right there,” Dee said. “They picked Young Scooter up put him in the car, and then took him right there … and then took him back out of the car and put him back on the ground.”

The neighborhood has Ring cameras. Dee’s account can be corroborated.

Dee and I walked the perimeter, trying to better understand how Bailey might have hurt himself. The property has a wooded break nearby. A neighbor’s wooden fence has one slat partially dislodged.

Police said Young Scooter injured his leg while climbing a fence as he ran from the house, as the average middle-aged man might do; Friday was his 39^th birthday. A break in the tibia that leads to a puncture of a main artery can easily kill. Any review of this incident should look at how much urgency police placed on medical treatment.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has take over review of Bailey’s death, police said.

Note that while it’s illegal to flee from the police at a traffic stop, it is no crime simply to run from the police at a house in Georgia, unless you’re already under arrest or police have an arrest warrant.

Young Scooter’s Wikipedia page references a drug trafficking charge from 2008: if Bailey was convicted of it, I can’t find it, or any other criminal convictions involving drugs or violence. Nor was he involved in the increasingly lethal gang conflicts of South Atlanta.

He had been on probation for brief periods in his youth for relatively minor (and arguably disputable) crimes more than 20 years ago. He was once arrested on a probation violation by a police officer at a traffic stop. It requires no leap of logic after that to understand why he might want to limit his contact with police, his friends said.

“Just like, right now, if we're sitting in front of this house right now and the police pulled up, Young Scooter could have nothing on him, or Scooter could have $90,000 on him. He's still going act like he's Skreet,” said his friend Sonny, who stays at the house where police were called.

Sonny said his friends called Bailey “Skreet.” Sonny wasn’t at home when the police arrived. The house is no trap and the presence of police at the door was surprising, he said. “What the hell going on? Like, bro, nobody even comes to this house,” Sonny said. “Like, literally, we just sit here and smoke weed and watch March Madness, right? I don't even know why the hell they're here.”

A friend called to say Bailey had been hurt and was in emergency surgery at Grady. In the 10 minutes between that call and Sonny’s rushed arrival to the hospital, Bailey had died. Police held two people from the house for about 12 hours before releasing them, he said.

“Nobody ever got charged with nothing,” Sonny said. “It's just a whole case that y'all just surrounded my man, and literally, bro, we just lost a whole legend just off nothing at all.”

Bailey is the father of four children, the youngest of which is four years old, Sonny said.

Born into dirt-road poverty in South Carolina, Young Scooter emerged in the East Atlanta rap renaissance of the early 2000s that produced Gucci Mane, 21 Savage and Rich Homie Quan. He was a prolific mixtape artist, and signed to Waka Flakka Flame’s imprint of Gucci Mane’s 1017 Records.

“Jugg King” is Young Scooter’s biggest solo piece. He has recorded with members of Migos, Gucci Mane, Kodak Black, Youngboy Never Broke Again and others. Young Thug’s “Guwop” featuring Young Scooter has more than 80 million streams on Spotify; Future’s “Jet Lag” with his childhood friend Young Scooter has more than 90 million.

“We were like one of the artists that would take their whole neighborhood and go to Magic City and order up a dime and throw a dime.” Sonny said of Young Scooter’s influence in pre-gentrification Kirkwood. At this point in his life, with four children and the patronage of many more through youth sports, Bailey’s only real vice was gambling on sports, Sonny said. (He had Duke winning the tournament.)

“Scooter never even wanted to be a rapper. Like, I can say this now. What did he want to do? He just wanted to just, like, have money honestly. But I think Scooter just wanted to do anything that had anything to do with sports.”

As an additional note, I’d like to mention that two young Black men died in the Lakewood Heights neighborhood Friday, and that both deaths are consequential, if for different reasons.

Police found Keiontay Davis bleeding to death from bullet wounds at a house on Lakewood Avenue late on Friday night, about six hours after Young Scooter’s death. Lakewood Heights has been wrestling with violence; eight people have been murdered in this neighborhood over the last four years. Four of them were murdered within 400 feet of the house where police found Davis. The city’s Policing Alternatives and Diversion office relocated to Lakewood Heights last year. The office is two buildings down the street from where Davis was found.

But Davis isn’t from Lakewood Heights.

Davis was a co-defendant in a murder trial, accused in the shooting death of Jaquavious Wilson in 2022. That murder appears to be part of the long-running street war between members of 4PF- Four Pockets Full - and OMF - Only My Family - a street offshoot of the Goodfellas prison gang.

Nathan “4PF Nate” Benford drew a 20-year prison sentence in a negotiated plea in this case. Wilson pleaded to lesser charges and was serving a 15-year probation when he was killed. The implication is that Benford had been prepared to testify at trial, which led to the plea bargained convictions.

Now, OMF could have killed Benford as an act of reprisal, or 4PF to silence a snitch. In either case it is one more escalation in the conflict that defense attorneys say began with the botched murder trial of the brother of the rapper Ralo a few years ago, which has led to a series of retaliatory killings.

Atlanta rap megastar Lil’ Baby repped 4PF lyrically. His music label was until recently called 4PF. Lil’ Baby shuttered the label in 2023, and said he did so because he didn’t want to be held responsible for criminal acts committed by 4PF gang members.

Nonetheless, Major Ralph Woolfolk, head of the city’s anti-gang unit, called out rapper Lil’ Baby last month for staging a music video in territory claimed by OMF last year. Shortly after that event, rival gang members went into 4PF territory in Oakland City to record a video, which led to a shootout that killed two 13-year-old boys and injured an 11-year-old.

It is this kind of tit-for-tat violence that led Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to launch a racketeering case against Young Thug and YSL in 2022. The U.S. Department of Justice indicted some members of the Goodfellas gang on racketeering charges two weeks ago. Federal prosecutors noted in a motion to seal parts of the case files that they expected gang members to try to kill people offering testimony.

The most common question I get about the YSL case is how much it cost to prosecute. It’s a reasonable question: given the intrinsic complexity of racketeering charges — as amply demonstrated in the Young Thug trial — one can ask if there are more cost-effective options available to a district attorney.

It’s worth noting that Willis asked Fulton County for a substantial increase in county spending on the district attorney’s office. The district attorney’s office has had the benefit of federal pandemic-era funding to clear its backload of cases. That funding stream has ended, but Willis wanted the county to continue budgeting at that level. When the county refused, Willis then threatened to sue the commission.

“If the proposed budget is enacted, Fulton County will certainly see a dramatic increase in its jail population and is likely to lose much of the progress that has been made in reducing violent crime,” Willis wrote to the commission. “Hear me clearly: if you enact the proposed budget: people will die.”

Willis was referring to a return to case backlogs that might be expected to increase the jail population — and Fulton County jail remains a human rights catastrophe.

But the increased staffing enabled by the federal money also permitted Willis to effectively devote one courtroom and one of Fulton County’s 20 superior court judges to a single case.

The DAs office only recently (and after consistent prodding) produced their budget over the last four years. I am after more granular data about the office’s spending, which they have yet to provide. They have flatly told me that they’re not going to give me a figure for the cost of the YSL trial because elements of the case remain in court.

I am expecting a fight. Willis’ office was fined $54,000 in attorney’s fees this month for resisting open records act requests from a right-wing watchdog group. It isn’t clear if she is complying with subpoenas issued by the Georgia State Senate special subcommittee on investigations: the legislative offices say the records are confidential. The subcommittee’s subpoena only covers financial records of transactions involving Nathan Wade or federal grants, and would not include her complete budget and line-item spending, as I have requested.

Shawn Hoover, who manages the Georgia Public Defender’s Council’s specialized unit on gang cases, says his office is actively preparing for a racketeering indictment on the 4PF and OMF cases … and that he expects Lil’ Baby to be indicted with others.

I will run that interview separately in coming days.