The detail prosecutors keep returning to is not Lil Durk himself but a 24-year-old named Saviay’a Robinson, known as Lul Pab, who was pulled from a Cadillac Escalade at a Los Angeles gas station near the Beverly Center in August 2022 and later died from his wounds. Robinson was not the intended target. Quando Rondo, born Tyquian Bowman, survived the attack.
Closing arguments began Tuesday in the federal murder-for-hire trial, with Assistant U.S. Attorney Ian Yanniello telling jurors that Lil Durk financed and directed the entire operation.
Prosecutors framed the shooting as the final act of a revenge campaign that started after Dayvon Bennett, known as King Von, was killed in November 2020 outside an Atlanta nightclub following a confrontation involving Quando Rondo’s entourage.
The government’s account is detailed and logistical. Prosecutors say five men, including co-defendants David Lindsey and Deondre Wilson, flew into San Diego rather than Los Angeles specifically to obscure their connection to the plot, then drove north and tracked Quando Rondo’s Escalade across the city before the attack.
The government argued that level of coordination required money, authority, and access, all of which they say pointed to Lil Durk.
Phone messages recovered from Lil Durk’s device became a focal point for prosecutors. One message discouraged booking flights under names connected to him, which Yanniello presented as evidence he was trying to hide his relationship with the travelers.
The defense countered that the message was about a talent agent’s wedding, not a murder plot, and that other messages simply reflected frustration with OTF members not working as a team.
Three cooperating witnesses, Kacey Hester known as OTF Jam, Keith Jones known as Flacka, and Kavon Grant known as OTF Vonni, testified for the government after admitting their own roles in serious crimes. OTF Vonni described arranging travel, hotel rooms, vehicles, guns, and ski masks, and claimed he collected firearms from Lil Durk’s Encino home.
Prosecutors acknowledged his major involvement but argued he was acting as Lil Durk’s assistant, not someone with independent command over OTF.
Defense attorney Brian Steel went straight at those three witnesses. He told jurors that OTF Jam has an extensive violent criminal history and asked how the government could ask them to trust someone who admitted responsibility for multiple killings.
Steel also raised the fact that investigators did not record OTF Jam’s first interviews, suggesting that gave authorities room to shape his account before preserving it.
The OTF Vonni angle was particularly sharp from the defense. Steel pointed out that Vonni had access to Lil Durk’s wallet, credit cards, banking passwords, PINs, and Social Security number, arguing that purchases made in Lil Durk’s name do not prove he personally ordered anything.
He also highlighted that during Vonni’s first interview, investigators confronted him with evidence suggesting he appeared to be running the operation himself, which Steel used to argue Vonni shifted the blame upward to avoid being treated as the ringleader.
Steel also accused the FBI of targeting Lil Durk specifically because his celebrity made him a valuable conviction.
Prosecutors pushed back on that framing entirely, asking jurors to set aside his fame and focus on Robinson’s death and the evidence connecting each defendant to the conspiracy.
Lil Durk, Lindsey, and Wilson have all pleaded not guilty. The five charges they face include conspiracy to commit stalking, stalking with a dangerous weapon, stalking resulting in death, and two counts connected to using interstate facilities in a murder-for-hire resulting in death.
Attorney Drew Findling was set to continue the defense’s closing before the jury receives its instructions and begins deliberating.
