A 27-year-old aspiring rapper from California has been identified as one of the victims killed during a Las Vegas shooting this week.
The family of Kenneth Cherry Jr., aka "Kenny Clutch," have identified him as one of the three left dead after the Vegas shooting, according to Las Vegas Fox station KVVU.
Clutch's family confirmed that the Oakland, Calif., rapper was driving the Maserati that was fired on by the occupants of a black Range Rover Thursday morning around 4:20 a.m., KVVU reports. Clutch was shot while behind the wheel, ran his Maserati through a red light on Las Vegas Boulevard and hit a cab at the intersection of Flamingo Road.
The Vegas shooting led to a fiery crash that onlookers described as something out of an action film, the Associated Press notes. The two individuals in the taxi were also killed. The shooting followed a reported argument that occurred in the valet area of the Aria hotel-casino.
According to his Facebook profile, Clutch, a father of two, was originally from Oakland and was living in Las Vegas at the time of the incident. His Maserati appears prominently in photos on his Facebook page and in videos uploaded to YouTube.
"Out of everyone I know in the rapping industry, there is no way I would have ever, ever expected to find that he was shot on the Las Vegas Strip in such an aggressive manner," Clutch's attorney, Vicki Greco, said in a statement via CNN. "He didn't have a [criminal] record or a history. He was just a good kid trying to make it and be a good father."
His father, Kenneth Cherry Sr., told ABC News, "This is something you never really, really ever want to experience as a parent, to lose a child before you go."
"I can tell you this ... the world has lost a good man," Pam Sims, his aunt, told The Oakland Tribune. "I'm not saying he didn't have his faults, but he was very kind, especially to older people. Whatever happened in Vegas, I don't know about, but he was a very kind soul."
Police continue to search for the suspects.