EAST FLATBUSH, Brooklyn (PIX11) – A man has been sentenced to prison for fatally shooting a Brooklyn rapper in 2017, officials announced Wednesday.
James Oliver, 44, of Brooklyn, was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years to life in prison for the death of 30-year-old Darnell Pettway, a local rapper known as Mook Mula.
The night Pettway was killed in December 2017, he and Oliver were drinking and gambling with a group of men inside a building lobby on East 92nd Street in East Flatbush, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. Oliver got into a fight with another person over a stolen cellphone and became enraged when Pettway didn’t intervene on his behalf, authorities said.
Oliver left and went to his apartment where he was recorded on surveillance video putting a gun into his waistband. He then went back to the building on East 92nd Street and fatally shot Pettway several times in the chest, authorities said.
Oliver was arrested for an unrelated incident in Pennsylvania in 2019. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Pettway’s death in April.
“This was a tragic and senseless shooting of a man who had his life and budding musical career tragically cut short,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement. “Brooklyn is safer with this defendant behind bars, and today’s sentence sends a strong message that gun violence in our neighborhoods will be met with serious consequences.”
