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"There is nothing more cowardly than shooting someone in the back," Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Gary Donatello said before Randy Manning was sentenced in Superior Court in Hackensack for killing Rhian “Kampane” Stoute in 2011.
Manning was originally convicted for the same crime and sent to state prison for life in 2014, but he got the conviction overturned in 2020 and was granted a new trial.
The verdicts this past June following a six-week trial were pretty much the same:
Jurors found Manning guilty of murder, desecration and unlawful moving of human remains, arson, destroying evidence, lying to law enforcement and illegal gun possession, among other counts.
Senior Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Danielle Grootenboer, who secured the verdicts with Assistant Prosecutor Gary Donatello, called Stoute’s murder “one of the most horrific crimes Bergen County has ever seen.”
“While his remains were engulfed in flames, Manning picked his clothes off him and stuffed them in a basin nearby,” she said.
Manning, a Trinidad and Tobago national who lived on Belmont Street in Englewood, already had a criminal record dating back to 2005 for crimes that included aggravated assault, assaulting police and illegal gun possession.
He'd apparently been shopping at a mall with Stoute on Aug. 15, 2011, then shot the 33-year-old Brooklyn rapper dead with a .40-caliber Glock handgun in a vacant house on nearby Tryon Avenue the next day.
Manning left the body but returned several hours later and set it on fire.
He then stashed it in the back of Stoute’s Chevy Tahoe and drove it to Village Circle, a cul-de-sac just off Forest Avenue near Van Saun Park in Paramus – a spot that investigators said he’d apparently chosen at random.
A California driver's license that had Manning’s picture but a different name was found in the vehicle along with the body, they said.
A medical examiner later reported that Stoute had been shot twice, with one of the bullets tearing into his shoulder and ripping through his heart.
Manning actually reached out to police first, telling them he wanted to know how the investigation was coming – often a key tell for homicide detectives.
An interrogation by investigators from the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office eventually secured a confession – although what led to the shooting was never fully explained.
Those who knew and loved Stoute said they’d have understood if he was “a real street person” and “a gang banger,” but all agreed that he wasn’t.
Donatello agreed.
Stoute was a "creative, passionate person,” he said, one who offered the world music with a positive feel on two albums and several videos that showed tremendous promise.
He counted Jay-Z among many hard-working people of integrity, those who knew him said.
Stoute’s goal, they said, was to get his mother a big house in a good neighborhood while working and caring for his grandfather.
Among the victim impact statements delivered in the courtroom on Friday was a heartfelt letter that a family member read from Stoute’s mom.
Manning has continued to maintain his innocence, said defense attorney Milagros Camacho, who sought a 30-year sentence for the murder conviction.
Superior Court Gary N. Wilcox wasn’t swayed.
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