Drake finally breaks silence on OVO Fest after-party shooting
Posted August 14, 2015 6:04 pm.
Last Updated August 14, 2015 11:34 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Ten days after a shooting at the after-party for Drake’s OVO Fest left two dead, the Toronto rapper is breaking his silence.
“I am plagued and pained by the violence that continues to escalate in our city,” Drake wrote in a blog post Friday.O
On Aug. 4 at around 3:30 a.m. the party inside Muzik nightclub at Exhibition Place turned violent. Witnesses recall hearing gunshots and revelers running into the street. Ariela Navarro-Fenoy, 26, and Duvel Hibbert, 23, were killed. Three others were injured.
He also expressed his deepest condolences to the families of victims Navarro-Fenoy and Hibbert, and wrote that Toronto is “a small close-knit community, and it is our public responsibility to ensure the safety and wellbeing of one another.”
Prior to his blog post, Drake had not made a public statement on the shooting, which took place at a celebration following his annual music festival. Drake wrote Friday that in situations such as this one, he looks to his advisors and counsel who, he wrote, worried that anything said could be misinterpreted.
“However, today I am choosing to follow my heart,” wrote Drake.
This was the second consecutive year that a shooting has taken place at a post-OVO Fest at Muzik.
At a news conference earlier in the week, Toronto police chief Mark Saunders was repeatedly asked about Drake (whose real name is Aubrey Graham), who declined to single out any one person who wasn’t helping with the investigation.
He said investigators have received very little information from the thousands of people who were at the club that night who may have seen something. Saunders said he wanted people to “do the right thing” and talk to police.
“I know that when people talk, people are less likely to pull out guns because they know that if people talk they are going to go to jail.”
See below for the full text of Drake’s blog post.
