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Surveillance video shows Justin Pope, 36, firing several shots at a woman who fled a Mercedes Benz during an argument in the parking lot of the Van Houten Avenue donut shop shortly after 9 p.m. July 12, U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Philip R. Sellinger said.
He missed her, but a bullet crashed through the window of the Dunkin' Donuts.
The bullet ended up "lodged in an electronic menu screen located above the cash registers of the coffee shop," according to a complaint on file in U.S. District Court in Newark.
The shop was open at the time, but there was no one inside or outside the store when it happened, a shaken employee told Daily Voice.
Both Pope – a former Remy Boyz group member who’s known in hip-hop circles as P-Dice -- and the woman then fled the area on foot.
The very next day, he posted an Instagram video that showed him firing a gun into the air.
“Can’t find me, (expletive) pigs… Y’all never gonna find me,” Pope says in the video.
They did find him, and it didn’t take long, Sellinger said.
Pope pulled a gun just hours later while trying to board a bus in New York City and was quickly arrested, Sellinger said. He was carrying a homemade 9mm ghost gun with a large-capacity magazine at the time, the U.S. attorney said.
Pope had served prison time following a 2016 shooting in which a 7-year-old Paterson boy was wounded by a stray bullet that crashed through a window frame in his home.
Struck in the shoulder, young Jaiden De Leon dialed 911, told police that he was shot and gave them the address.
Pope appeared in the video “679” alongside Wap, sometimes dancing and singing, while holding a bottle of Remy Martin cognac. Wap later said he bounced Pope from the Remy Boyz, after which the two battled it out on hip-hop messages boards and in videos.
Sellinger credited special agents of the FBI, police in Clifton, Paterson and Passaic, the Passaic County Sheriff’s Office and the NYPD with the investigation leading to the current charges.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Rachelle M. Navarro of his Criminal Division in Newark is handling the case.
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