Three rappers from metro Detroit have been officially listed as missing after they failed to show up for a performance at a club on Jan. 21, 2023, and have not been seen since.
Police departments in four jurisdictions in and around the Motor City are collaborating in the effort to locate Armani Kelly (aka, Marley Whoop), Dante Wicker, and Montoya Givens. They were set to make an appearance at Lounge 31 in Detroit when they disappeared.
“It’s our understanding that the performance got canceled, and from there – we just have a whole lot of unanswered questions that we are trying to find out,” said Detroit commander of crimes Michael McGinnis according to CNN.
The mother of Kelly, Lorrie Kemp, is wracked with guilt because her son used her car to pick up the other two rappers, Wicker and Givens. She believes the worst may have happened to the three.
“I’m never going to see that smile again,” Kemp cried in an interview with NBC News.
“And do you know how guilty I feel because my son picked up the other two young men,” she added.
Kemp did not wait for the police to officially declare her son missing. Once he failed to return home that night, Kemp was the one who searched and eventually found the vehicle at an apartment complex.
“The mother of one of the victims, the next day, made a report of the missing person,” McGinnes said. “That mother became very proactive in the investigation and started searching for her vehicle through OnStar.”
The police department told the media that the car was recovered on Jan. 23 in Warren, Michigan, a 20-mile drive north of Detroit. But there is no trace of the three men and the Detroit police admit they have few leads.
ABC affailiate WXZY said that Armani Kelly’s fiancée told them that he texted her the night the show was canceled but hasn’t heard from him since.
Kelly’s mother, Lorrie Kemp, has posted flyers all around her hometown of Lansing, Michigan, but she is already resigned to never seeing him again. Kemp also laments the fact that her son survived a long stint behind bars only to be allegedly murdered after regaining his freedom.
“I am angry because you did eight years in prison, and you didn’t die and then you get out and they kill you. He’s dead,” Kemp told NBC News. “I don’t want to be on ‘Dateline’ in 20 years to find his body. I am doing everything I possibly can, and I am out there hitting the roads, hitting the pavement. where is the police department? They didn’t do their job.”
