Producer Dun Deal was jailed for 10 days after Augusta, Ga. police arrested him for a robbery he did not commit.
Let this be a lesson to people who just follow anybody on Facebook.
Atlanta-based producer Dun Deal [Migos‘ “Hannah Montana,” Young Thug‘s “Stoner”] real name David Cunningham, thought he was just being nice when he followed back a woman named Ronnica Westmoreland on Facebook. He doesn’t know her, never even met her, but figured that she was a fan.
But come to find out, Cunningham rented a getaway car that was used for a smash-and-grab $80,000 jewelry heist that happened in Augusta, Ga. in 2014. When police caught her and started to question her about her role, she said that she rented the car for a guy named “David.”
That’s when the Richmond County Police Department decided to their best detective work and look up anybody named “David” on her Facebook page. When Cunningham’s profile popped up, they saw him rocking jewelry and posing in pictures standing next to Birdman, who also likes jewelry. Putting their two-and-twos together, the police assumed that Cunningham was the “David” they were looking for.
That’s when Richmond County Police issued a warrant for Cunningham’s arrest saying that he resembled one of the men they saw on security camera footage. They also made up a lie saying that they had Cunningham’s fingerprints from the scene and that it matched his. Cunningham had never been arrested in Augusta, or anywhere else before, so he had no such fingerprints in their system.
Armed with their “evidence,” the police got the FBI involved in the investigation. The FBI intercepted Cunningham as he was checked into a Dallas airport. He says undercover agents wearing Hawaiian shirts and sunglasses arrested him, making a scene. He says that his recording studio was also raided, where law enforcement threw tear gas over the fence, bust down the doors and put guns in people’s faces.
Cunningham wound up spending 10 days in jail with no bond until his lawyer proved that the entire operation was a farce and demanded that he be released. Richmond County Police acknowledged their mistake of assuming that every young African-American male wearing jewelry is a robbery suspect.
“If he was someone else, someone without family, without means, without a father who understood the process, that 10 days could have turned to 50. It could have turned to 100. That’s how people get sucked into the system,” said Cunningham’s lawyer Caleb Gross to CBS 46 News.
The four men that actually did commit the robbery were found and arrested. The Facebook friend who said she gave the car to a man named “David” was arrested for giving false statements. The officers who fabricated evidence were “disciplined” and one of them resigned.
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