Silentó, the Atlanta rapper whose 2015 hit “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” became one of the decade’s best-known dance crazes, is serving a 30-year prison sentence for the 2021 shooting death of his cousin, Frederick Rooks III. Silentó’s legal name is Ricky Lamar Hawk. On June 11, 2025, the week his trial was due to begin, he pleaded guilty but mentally ill in DeKalb County Superior Court and was sentenced the same day.
This article explains what happened, what the plea means under Georgia law, and why the case is still discussed as a case about mental illness as much as celebrity.
The shooting
DeKalb County police officers responded at about 3:37 a.m. on Jan. 21, 2021, to a report of a person shot in the Panthersville area of unincorporated Decatur, Georgia. They found Rooks, 34, with multiple gunshot wounds, and he was pronounced dead at the scene. Ten bullet casings were found near his body, according to the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office.
Investigators built the case quickly:
- A neighbor’s security camera showed a white BMW SUV leaving the area at high speed minutes after the gunfire.
- A relative told police that Rooks was last seen with Hawk, who had picked him up from a friend’s home in a white BMW SUV. A license-plate camera captured that vehicle nearby at 2:45 a.m.
- Hawk was taken into custody on Feb. 1, 2021, and admitted to shooting Rooks during an interview with investigators.
- Ballistics testing matched the casings to a gun found with Hawk when he was arrested, and GPS data placed his SUV at the scene.
The plea and the sentence
Hawk had been indicted on charges including malice murder. Under the plea agreement, he pleaded guilty but mentally ill to voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime and concealing the death of another. The malice murder count was reduced to voluntary manslaughter and a felony murder charge was dropped, Billboard reported. AP also reported that a murder charge was dropped as part of the plea. Judge Courtney L. Johnson sentenced him to 30 years in prison, with credit for the roughly four years he had already spent in jail.
Rooks’ brothers and sisters told the judge that Hawk should have received a longer sentence, CBS News reported, citing The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
What “guilty but mentally ill” means
A guilty-but-mentally-ill plea is not an insanity defense. The defendant is found guilty and sentenced like any other defendant. The difference is that the finding places responsibility on Georgia’s Department of Corrections to evaluate and treat the person’s mental illness, as The New York Times explained.
Mental illness ran through this case from the start. When Hawk was arrested in 2021, a representative said he had been “suffering immensely from a series of mental health illnesses.” Court filings say he was diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder in jail, according to Billboard. After the hearing, his lawyer, Keith Adams, told Billboard: “For the first time since he’s been arrested, Ricky is in his right mind.” Adams said Hawk had been dealing with mental illness since age 12 and called the outcome appropriate.
Hawk had talked publicly about his struggles years earlier. “Depression doesn’t leave you when you become famous, it just adds more pressure,” he said on the TV show The Doctors in 2019, CBS reported.
From viral hit to prison
Hawk was a high school junior in suburban Atlanta when he released “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” in 2015, and the song took off as a dance craze. He was 27 when he was sentenced. The case is a stark example of how little viral success protects against serious illness. It is also a reminder that the victim here was a member of his own family, whose relatives said in court that 30 years was not enough.
Sources
- DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office, “Lithonia man pleads guilty in 2021 murder of cousin,” June 11, 2025.
- AP, “Rapper Silentó gets 30 years for shooting his cousin,” June 11, 2025.
- CBS News, “Atlanta rapper Silentó sentenced to 30 years in cousin’s deadly shooting,” June 11, 2025.
- Billboard, “Rapper Silento sentenced to 30 years in prison for cousin’s killing,” June 11, 2025.
- The New York Times, “The Rapper Silentó Gets 30 Years in Prison for Fatal Shooting of His Cousin,” June 11, 2025.
