Tutu Blicky, Brooklyn Rapper, Arrested For Miami Beach Parking Spot Murder

MIAMI BEACH, FL — Jeffrey Alexander, a 19-year-old resident of Flatbush, Brooklyn, and an up-and-coming rapper who goes by the names "22Gz," "Tutu Blicky" and "Tutu Blixcky," has been arrested for his alleged role in a bloody Memorial Day weekend shootout in South Beach that left two dead and one wounded.

"We now know that it started with a dispute over a parking space," Miami Beach Police Chief Daniel Oates said Monday.

Alexander, apparently in town to perform as part of the annual Urban Beach Week hip-hop festival, is facing charges of second-degree murder for allegedly killing 30-year-old Florida resident Ladarian Phillips.

A second man was also killed by police officers in an ensuing car chase. (The victim has yet to be ID'd, but police said he was riding in the same BMW as the Brooklyn rapper.)

Alexander has denied the story Miami Beach cops are telling about that night. "Don't let that news sh*t fool you — I'm innocent," he said in a phone call from Miami-Dade County jail, recorded by his friends and aired Monday on Facebook Live.

"I'll be home soon," the young rapper promised. His friends and fans have since been calling for him to be freed on social media.

However, the Miami Beach police chief said Monday that he was "confident we have the shooter identified."

Brooklyn Supreme Court records show Alexander is currently facing felony charges in his home county as well, for "conspiracy" to commit murder in 2014. (Although he wasn't arrested until winter 2015.)

The local indictment against Alexander alleges he was a member of a Flatbush gang called the "Young Savages." The crew was comprised of "a group of younger individuals associated with another criminal street gang called the '6-Trey Gangsta Disciple,' which operated and resided primarily between the vicinity of Hawthorne Street to Lenox Road and Flatbush Avenue to Nostrand Avenue," according to the indictment.

Alexander and three associates were accused by county prosecutors of plotting to kill members of a rival gang called "Only The Fields," based out of the public Ebbets Field Houses complex in Crown Heights.

That case is still in the trial phase. Alexander's next appearance is scheduled for July 12.

The teen rapper's most popular music video, "Suburban," was recorded in the streets of Brooklyn with guns and blunts as props. The video, included below, has racked up more than 1 million views on YouTube in just half a year.

Alexander, a reported resident of the 1800 block of Nostrand Avenue in Flatbush, was riding through South Beach in the front passenger's seat of a white BMW with New York tags on Sunday night, police said.

Just after 10:30 p.m., the driver of the BMW tried to force the car into a coveted parking spot on Ocean Drive near Second Street by repeatedly ramming its rear into a gold Buick Regal parked behind it, according to arrest documents reviewed by Patch.

"When the BMW could not fit into the space, the BMW began force pushing the Buick back in an attempt to move the Buick," Alexander's arrest affidavit says.

Two men then approached the driver of the BMW and asked how many more times he planned to hit the Buick, which resulted in a verbal altercation, the affidavit says. At which point the driver of the BMW allegedly passed a handgun to his front-seat passenger — later identified by cops as Alexander.

"The defendant pointed the firearm and discharged two to three rounds in the direction of victims from the BMW as the BMW was driving away from the parking space," the affidavit says.

One man was shot in the leg, while Phillips took a fatal bullet to the back, according to police. The BMW then allegedly fled the scene.

Two cop cars caught up with the BMW shortly after, as it sped the wrong way down 5th Street, police said — resulting in a crash that damaged all three vehicles near Alton Road and Fifth. The BMW then drove one block further, police said, before two officers opened fire.

One occupant of the BMW was hit by a police bullet. He has since died.

"A weapon was recovered in this event, and a search for additional weapons was conducted overnight in the dark," the local police chief said Monday. "And another search is underway right now in daylight."

The police shooting is being investigated by the Miami-Dade Police Department, a county agency, under a two-year-old policy in which all the city's officer-involved shootings are investigated by an outside entity. Both of the Miami Beach cops involved in Sunday's shooting have since been placed on administrative leave in accordance with department policy.

Officers said they took two other occupants of the BMW (including Alexander) into custody at the scene of the police shooting. However, a third man in the car allegedly took off on foot, leading cops on a chase that lasted more than an hour and 15 minutes and snarled traffic along the busy MacArthur Causeway in South Beach. He was eventually captured by a K-9 unit.

All the suspects have since been released, police said — except for the Brooklyn rapper.

Prior to the outbreak of violence in South Beach on Sunday night, local police had said arrests were down during this year's Urban Beach Week, a weeklong hip-hop festival that stretches through Memorial Day weekend. Almost every year, crime spikes during the festival — and almost every year, city leaders call for it to be shut down.

Again on Monday, Miami Beach Commissioner Mike Grieco vowed to put an end to the unsanctioned tradition.

"Urban Beach weekend is a thing of the past," Grieco, who is running for mayor, told reporters. "After 17 years of trying to handle this and trying to measure success by the number of arrests or by the lack of shootings is something that we are no longer going to tolerate."

Miami Beach's current mayor instead focused on the site of the deadly parking-spot dispute.

Mayor Philip Levine proposed Tuesday that alcohol sales at Ocean Drive's iconic outdoor bars and cafes be pulled back from 5 a.m. to 2 a.m., and that they be banned from playing loud music.

Levine said he remembered the days when Ocean was "peaceful... artsy... creative... clean." But "during the last five, six, seven, eight years," he said, "we've seen a downward trend in Ocean Drive. What we need to do as a city is to reform and clean up Ocean Drive.”

This story has been updated. All reporting from Miami Beach by Paul Scicchitano (Patch Staff). Photos courtesy of the Miami-Dade County Corrections and Rehabilitation Department