Tributes have been paid to Baby Cino, an aspiring rapper from Miami, who was shot and killed in a daylight ambush minutes after leaving a city jail on Wednesday.
The 20-year-old vocalist, whose real name was Timothy Starks, was arrested by Miami-Dade officers at 2am in Opa-locka, Florida on Tuesday after they pulled him over for driving with an obscured number plate. On searching his car, police found a fully loaded Glock 32 pistol.
He was released on bond on a gun charge and left the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center at 2pm on Wednesday.
He was picked up by a friend, Dante Collins Banks, in a red Nissan car. When they turned on to the Palmetto expressway, a gunman in another vehicle opened fire on them in the middle of traffic.
Starks was shot in the head and died at the scene. Banks was wounded in the stomach and transported to the Jackson Memorial hospital where he remains in a stable condition.
Detectives have not identified a suspect but told the Miami Herald that “a dark-coloured vehicle was seen fleeing the area at a high rate of speed”.
Starks was only identified on Friday as the victim of the shooting.
On hearing of his death, one fan wrote on Twitter: “Damn they killed baby cino soon as he got out.”
Another posted: “Thats crazy how Baby Cino died smh, someone was watching his ass leaving jail.”
“Detectives are looking at every motive or every bit of information based on the evidence they have here at the scene,” the Miami-Dade police detective Angel Rodriguez told the local TV channel WPLG. “As you can see, the car has a significant amount of bullet holes.”
Law-enforcement sources told the Herald that the shooting was being investigated for links to a series of public ambushes in recent months that are thought to be connected to Miami street gangs.
Starks was believed to be associated with a gang known as “Boss Life” in the Little Haiti area of Miami.
His best-known song, a track titled Big Haiti Shottas, features him and an entourage rapping about violence at a local apartment building.
The lyrics include the lines: “Spot ’em, I got ’em/If it’s an issue or a problem, we’ll pull up with them choppers/We’ll leave him dead on the scene/Hell na he ain’t making it to the doctor.”
The accompanying music video was dedicated to Gary “Melo” Laguerre, an 18-year-old murdered in a drive-by shooting in 2020.
• The headline of this article was amended on 20 March 2022 to clarify that Baby Cino had been released from jail, not prison.
