Only four days after his trial for murder and robbery began and just three after pleading guilty to aggravated robbery, Texas rapper Tay-K has been found guilty of the 2016 murder of 21-year-old Ethan Walker according to NBC. Tay-K was tried as an adult, despite only being 16 years old at the time of the offense.
Tay-K now faces a sentence between five and 99 years in prison, after narrowly avoiding a possible mandatory charge of 40 years for capital murder. According to NBC, Tay-K did not show any emotion as he was being sentenced. Tay-K’s lawyer argued that, because Tay himself did not pull the trigger, he shouldn’t be held responsible for Walker’s death. However, the prosecution maintained that because he knew two of the six other associates with him at the time were armed, he knew that someone could be killed, making him complicit once someone actually was.
Tay-K also reportedly told police he heard voices in his head when he was arrested, which some interpreted as a bid for a possible insanity plea to avoid the more serious charge. Tay-K rose to infamy in 2017 after cutting his house arrest ankle monitor, going on the run, and documenting the experience as the viral single, “The Race.” Now, it seems, the race is over and in Tay-K’s case, nobody really won at all.
