Rapper Fatally Shot Minutes After Jail Release

Miami police are investigating a brazen daylight shooting that took the life of an aspiring rapper who had been released from jail only minutes earlier. The Miami Herald reports that 20-year-old Timothy Starks, aka Baby Cino, was gunned down in a car in rush-hour traffic as the vehicle he was in entered the Palmetto Expressway. A friend had just picked him up from a Miami-Dade jail. Starks had been arrested Tuesday during a traffic stop and charged with carrying a concealed weapon, per Local10. He bonded out Wednesday, and friend Dante Banks picked him up, say police. Banks was wounded in the shooting, though his injuries are not life-threatening. Police say the gunman or gunmen in another car fired about 40 rounds.

Starks did not have a big following as a rapper, but he was working on it. People notes he was best known for the song and video "Big Haiti Shottas." Law enforcement sources tell the Herald that Starks was affiliated with a local gang known as “Boss Life,” and his shooting may be connected to a series of fatal ambushes in recent months. Driver Banks was shot in the abdomen but has since been released from the hospital. “My son was OK,” Banks' mother tells WSVN. She was actually speaking with him on the phone when the shooting took place. “He was talking. He was just shook up ’cause his friend got shot.” (More rapper stories.)