King Von

Case background and investigation

Dayvon Bennett, who performed as King Von, was a 26-year-old rapper from Chicago. In the early hours of Friday, November 6, 2020, he and a group of men left the Opium nightclub in Atlanta and went to the Monaco Hookah Lounge at 255 Trinity Avenue, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

The GBI said two men approached the group in the parking lot, an argument began and it quickly turned into an exchange of gunfire between the two sides. Music outlets including XXL reported that the other group included the rapper Quando Rondo and Timothy Leeks. Atlanta police officers intervened, among them officers working off duty as security at the lounge. The GBI stated that two officers, one on duty and one off duty, fired their weapons and that no officer was hurt.

Six people were shot. Bennett and Mark Blakely, 34, also of Chicago, died. The GBI at first announced three deaths and corrected the figure to two on November 9, 2020. Because officers had fired, the GBI investigated the police use of force while the Atlanta Police Department handled the homicide inquiry, and the GBI said its findings would go to the Fulton County District Attorney. The Atlanta Police Department said its investigators believed Bennett was shot during the initial exchange between the two groups, before officers responded, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Atlanta police charged Timothy Leeks, then 22, with felony murder in Bennett's death. Leeks had himself been wounded in the shooting. The Journal-Constitution reported on November 13, 2020, that two other men had been arrested on separate charges arising from the shootout, one for possessing a firearm as a convicted felon and one for aggravated assault. Neither was charged with killing Bennett.

Leeks was never indicted. On August 20, 2023, his attorney, Noah Pines, confirmed that the case against him had been dismissed before any indictment was returned, Revolt and XXL reported. Wikipedia and music-press reports attribute the dismissal to Georgia's stand-your-ground self-defence law. Members of Bennett's family publicly objected and said prosecutors had not informed them beforehand, according to XXL.

No one has been convicted of killing Bennett, and Leeks is legally presumed innocent of the dismissed charge. Bennett was buried near Chicago in November 2020. Wikipedia notes that in October 2024 federal prosecutors charged the rapper Lil Durk with a murder-for-hire conspiracy that they allege was aimed at Quando Rondo in retaliation for Bennett's death. Those are allegations in a separate case and not findings about the 2020 shooting.