APD Homicide Commander Ralph Woolfolk said Baby was filming the video in the same area and "he knew he should not have been" there, calling it a "cowardly act" and vowing to hold him accountable.
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00:00Atlanta police want Lil Baby, and they want him for what they deem his involvement in the shooting deaths of two teenagers last summer in Atlanta.
00:12Now, they're not saying that he pulled the trigger, and that's what's kind of crazy about what you're about to hear.
00:18Yesterday, police held a news conference where they were talking about these shooting deaths.
00:23And while they don't say Lil Baby's name here, you're going to hear this is a major in the Atlanta Police Department,
00:30he is clearly referring to an incident that happened last year when Lil Baby was filming a music video,
00:37and they are pissed, the police are, that he chose the location he did for that shoot.
00:43Lamont Freeman was allowed to be a 13-year-old for 27 minutes before gang violence ultimately took his life.
00:51And cowardly acts, cowardly acts of an Atlanta-based rapper decided to go over into a rival gang stronghold
01:02and shoot a music video in a place that he knew he should not have been.
01:08And in the subsequent days, we saw homicides and shootings, and ultimately,
01:14the deaths of two children as a result of his cowardly actions, and you know who you are.
01:21And I tell you that this team will work relentlessly to hold you and the persons that you are affiliated with responsible for those actions.
01:30That is really strong. And again, I think there's a reason that they didn't say his name.
01:37Right.
01:38Because this does seem like, legally, it seems like a stretch.
01:42Now, I get that they are upset that Lil Baby shot, by the way, it was last May of 2024 when he was filming this music video.
01:50Now, there was an incident that happened on set, and the police at the time said they believed that this was gang-related,
02:00but now they're full out with something, blaming Lil Baby.
02:03Did it seem like he was poking and prodding the rival gang a little bit? Yeah, probably.
02:09Look, we're a long way from criminal responsibility if you're shooting a music video there.
02:13You have to have an overt action, and you have to have a sort of guilty mind, a mens rea, to accuse someone of a crime like this.
02:20That's why you have conspiracy laws and threat laws and things of that nature.
02:24But to just shoot a music video and connect him to the subsequent tragedies is a big hill to climb.
02:30Could he be a witness, and may he know some information? Quite possibly.
02:33But criminal responsibility for shooting the music video there, it's just lacking.
02:37Especially, Derek, because this was, what, how many, so three months before the two teenagers were killed, that was in July,
02:47but basically what the police are saying is that all of the gang violence was set off, started with that music video.
02:53To lay that at his feet, ah, that seems very overzealous.
02:56That's the most ridiculous part. I mean, look at the nexus.
02:59I mean, we've got months that passed, and he wants to pin it all on what may have been a foolhardy place to shoot.
03:05I mean, I'm not, shoot the video. I'm not sort of excusing that behavior.
03:08Maybe there's some sort of shaming that can go on, but to build a criminal investigation from a music video shoot
03:14and then a tragedy that occurs months later, it's just going to be a hard, hard thing for investigators to get to.
03:19I think that everything we just laid out there is, one, why they didn't say his name during the news conference
03:25and why he has not been arrested at this point.
03:28They, as far as we know, there isn't even a warrant for his arrest.
03:32Again, his name was mentioned in an arrest warrant for other individuals who are, I would say, more clearly involved.
03:40The people who pulled the trigger are responsible for the murder.
03:43But this is clearly something that we are expecting.
03:46Lil Baby has not said anything yet. We are in contact with his attorney,
03:51and I would imagine when they're so publicly sort of shaming him, he's going to have something to say about this.
03:57Hi, I'm Imani. I'm from Atlanta.
04:00I can understand being upset about this, but I can't justify blaming him for this, especially because the months that pass,
04:06you can't really correlate that.
04:08I can understand the general upset of being like, why would you come out there in rival gang territory?
04:12But, I mean, he's just doing his job.
04:14It's very sad that teenagers lost their lives.
04:17But gang activity was gang activity before he came out there.
04:21So that's just my thoughts.
04:22A million things could have happened in between that period, the video shot and the murders.
04:27Yeah, I mean, you can certainly say that he sort of inflamed the situation by going there.
04:35Seems like a stretch to blame him for the tragic death of those two teenagers.
04:44Yeah.