A critical and highly disputed six-minute timespan is at the heart of the PnB Rock murder trial that finished closing arguments Tuesday and is now in the hands of a jury in Compton, California.
Prosecutors say the six minutes between 1:14 p.m. and 1:20 p.m. on Sept. 12, 2022, was the time it took for murder defendant Freddie Trone, 42, to drive out of a Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles parking lot, arm his 17-year-old son with a semi-automatic gun, a ski mask, and a robbery plot, and then deliver the teen back to the restaurant for what would lead to the murder of PnB Rock, born Rakim Allen.
Trone’s defense lawyer, Winston McKesson, gave jurors an alternate scenario during his closing argument Tuesday. He said Trone left the Roscoe’s at 1:14 p.m., drove to his beauty supply shop two minutes away, turned his back to use a bathroom and had his Buick Enclave stolen by his son — who then returned to the Roscoe’s with three others. McKesson urged jurors to scrutinize the surveillance video showing the shooter exiting the car outside the Roscoe’s in South Los Angeles. He said the teen is seen exiting the Enclave from the seat behind the driver, entering and exiting the Roscoe’s, and running back to the closest backseat door before hesitating and circling around to the backseat on the drivers side.
“It tells you that there’s more people in the car,” McKesson argued. He called the video “extremely important,” not only because it allegedly backs up his client’s claim that he was no longer driving but also because “it cuts against the heart” of Deputy District Attorney Timothy Richardson’s allegation that Trone was seeking a six-figure score by robbing jewelry from the celebrated rapper. He said Trone didn’t trust his son enough to “go buy a can of soup” and never would have tapped more people to help the teen carry out the alleged crime.
“Whoever is behind this, I agree, they’re looking for money,” McKesson argued. “You don’t want to share the money. Why would you bring three other guys in there? You’d have to split the money three more ways.”
In his final rebuttal after McKesson spoke, Richardson told jurors that the six critical minutes simply wasn’t enough time for Trone’s version of events. He argued that surveillance video of the Enclave from the neighborhood “shows you where the vehicle went,” and a roundtrip to Trone’s shop several more blocks away “was impossible.”
“In six minutes, the defense want you to believe that [the teen shooter] rounded up his boys, got a strap, hopped in his dad’s car, and drove back to the Roscoe’s,” Richardson argued. “Coincidence? No. Coordinated acts? Yes.”
Richardson delivered the bulk of his closing argument on Monday, going over the many surveillance videos that pieced together Allen’s final hours and the aftermath that included Trone’s movements before he admittedly burned the Enclave a few blocks from his wife’s residence after the shooting. On Tuesday, McKesson argued that with “all these videos” collected by investigators, the only time his client is seen getting into the vehicle is when he left the Roscoe’s parking lot after speaking with his co-defendant, Tremont Jones, for the three minutes leading up to 1:14 p.m. The lawyer said the “covered” item that Jones handed Trone during the meeting was a bag of marijuana, not a gun supplied for an alleged conspiracy to commit robbery.
“He told you why he buys the weed. He said it’s because smoking marijuana does a better job to balance his son’s chemical imbalance and has a better total effect than Adderall,” McKesson said, referring to the teen’s previously discussed diagnoses.
The lawyer also used his final address to jurors to fault investigators for not collecting surveillance video from the area around Trone’s beauty shop, about a half-mile away. He argued such video would have backed up Trone’s claim that his car was stolen by his son and that an unidentified person with a burgundy SUV picked him up so he could search for his son. The defense lawyer further argued that prosecutors had no evidence of any communication between Trone and Jones before they met up in the Roscoe’s parking lot about a half hour after Allen fist-bumped Jones as he entered the Roscoe’s with his fiancée Stephanie Sibounheuang.
“There’s no evidence to show my client was paged to get there, no phone calls, no text messages. They want you to believe he just intuited that his services on a robbery homicide would be required,” McKesson argued. He claimed investigators had “their mind made up” and “ignored” anything that could prove his client’s innocence. “There’s no evidence that my client planned anything. You have no evidence that he intended anything,” he said. “This young [shooter] acted independently of his dad. There is no evidence that he controlled that boy.”
Richardson rebutted that he wasn’t required to show that there was extensive pre-planning or even that Jones met with the teen shooter before the homicide. He called the alleged robbery conspiracy a “crime of opportunity” that turned deadly. Richardson called it “astonishing” that Trone admitted he was buying weed for his son to replace prescription drugs.
Richardson urged the jurors to question why Trone never identified the person who allegedly picked him up in the burgundy SUV. “That is the person that can account for those six minutes of Mr. Freddie Trone’s life … He just needs these six minutes of explanation not captured on a camera. Mr. Freddie Trone didn’t want to give you the name of that person — the sole person to provide an alibi,” Richardson argued. He said the reason was because the driver didn’t “exist.”
Richardson then gave Allen’s mother, Deannea Allen, a signal that he was about to play the video from inside the Roscoe’s one more time for the jury. Deannea quietly left the courtroom first. Speaking to Rolling Stone on Monday, Deannea said it was “devastating” to see the autopsy photo of her son that was shown on a courtroom screen. She called Trone’s alibi story “ridiculous.”
“I’m here to get justice. I want justice. This was my son, my child,” Deannea said. “I want the jury to know he has a family who loves him and wants to support him.”
For his part, Jones said he played no role in the alleged father-son robbery plot. His defense lawyer, David Haas, reminded jurors Tuesday that his client was not charged with murder, only two counts of robbery and one count of conspiracy. He said Jones was well-known at the Roscoe’s, so the prosecution’s theory that Jones handed Trone a gun in full view of a Roscoe’s security camera made “no sense.” Haas also highlighted the lack of any phone calls or electronic communication the day of the shooting beyond a single 1-second cell phone connection between Trone and Jones that he dismissed as meaningless.
“This case is so thin,” Haas said in his closing argument. “What if Mr. Jones is simply a weed dealer?” The jury of four women and eight men deliberated for two hours Tuesday and is set to return Wednesday morning.
Allen’s stunning death rocked the hip-hop community. The Philadelphia-bred artist became a breakout star in 2016 with his triple-platinum single “Selfish.” That same year, Rolling Stone named him a New Artist You Need to Know. He went on to reach crossover fame with collaborations such as his 2019 feature on Ed Sheeran’s “Cross Me.”
After the slaying, Allen’s fiancée faced a barrage of accusations online that her post about their meal at the Roscoe’s restaurant that day led the shooter to their location. When Sibounheuang testified during the trial, her since-deleted post was shown to the jury. She confirmed it didn’t specify which Roscoe’s location she was at and only showed her food. “That social media post was a big issue, but if you think about, on that post, there’s no image of jewelry. There’s no image of PnB Rock,” Richardson argued in his closing on Monday. “For all the universe knew, Stephanie was with her girlfriends. Stephanie was with her child. Stephanie was with her mother. This post doesn’t give you a reasonable inference, but the defense wants you to believe the entire universe knew PnB Rock was at [the Roscoe’s] at Manchester [Ave.] and Main [Street].”
In her harrowing testimony, Sibounheuang gave her firsthand account of how the hip-hop star pushed her out of the way to save her life when the young shooter opened fire on the couple inside the restaurant just minutes after they received their food. Speaking to Rolling Stone, Sibounheuang said Allen “saved” her life. “He’s heroic. He’s a hero. [Other men] would never,” she said of his actions to protect her.