DETAILS FOUND IN POP SMOKE'S DEATH CERTIFICATE
By CARLO MASSIMO
History - Science
In 2020, 20-year-old rapper Pop Smoke was shot inside an Airbnb in the Hollywood Hills by five masked men, who had targeted him after seeing him show off a diamond-studded Rolex on social media. The perpetrators, two of them minors, found out about his residence from the social media post, where the address was visible.
His mother, Audrey Jackson, pointed out the irony of her son being shot by the very people for whom he made music, and although she wanted consequences for them, she wished for young people to work on themselves. His now-online death certificate revealed that his real name was Bashar Barakah Jackson, he was born in 1999 in New York, and he had not finished college and was unmarried.
The death certificate revealed that the “immediate cause of death” was a “gunshot wound to the torso,” with a later clarification that the gunmen shot him. The New York Daily News reported that he died at 5:12 am, meaning he lived for 45 minutes after being shot at 4:30 am, which was enough time for emergency responders to perform a "left thoracotomy.”