Jaime Brugada Valdez, 22, was found at a correctional facility in Soledad, California, on Tuesday with injuries consistent with a homicide, officials said..
A Los Angeles-area rapper known as MoneySign Suede was killed in a California prison Tuesday, his attorney and the state corrections department said.
The rapper, whose real name was Jaime Brugada Valdez, was found at the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad around 10 p.m. “with injuries consistent with a homicide,” the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said.
The 22-year-old “Back to the Bag” rapper was stabbed in the neck in a shower, his attorney Nicholas Rosenberg said.
Rosenberg said he spoke with Valdez’s family, who were informed of details of his death from the corrections department.
“There’s an investigation but at this point the motive remains unknown,” Rosenberg said. “Suede was a very popular guy, very mild mannered, everybody loved him.”
The state corrections department did not say how Valdez died, or where he was found.
The department said at 9:55 p.m. he was not in his cell during counting. He was found unresponsive in another area of the housing unit. Life-saving measures were began, but he was pronounced dead at 10 p.m., it said.
The Los Angeles Times and celebrity website TMZ earlier reported news of Valdez’s death.
Rosenberg said MoneySign Suede was an up-and-coming rapper originally from Huntington Park, a city within the Los Angeles area. The “Back to the Bag” video on his official YouTube page has more than 7 million views and the account has more than 87,000 subscribers.
The musician was serving what amounted to a 32-month sentence for two gun-related convictions. He was sentenced in December, and the sentences for the two cases were running concurrently, according to the Department of Corrections.
The Correctional Training Facility, or CFT, is a prison that houses around 4,000 minimum- and medium-security inmates, the department said.