Brooklyn rapper Dupree G.O.D. turned himself in to the New York Police Department Wednesday afternoon after video emerged that appeared to show him firing a flamethrower from the top of a city bus.
Dupree G.O.D. surrendered to the 79th Precinct, in Bed-Stuy, shortly after 2 p.m. his lawyer, Cary London, confirmed to Vulture. He’s facing a reckless endangerment charge, London said prior to Dupree G.O.D.’s surrender.
Asked whether Dupree G.O.D. is admitting that it’s him in the video, or whether he’s maintaining that it’s not him, London said: “I’m not discussing individual facts right now.”
“De Blasio is already burning this city to the ground — so what’s one more fire?” London commented in an email.
The development stems from a now-viral video posted to Twitter on November 17 with the words “Brooklyn is LIT.” In this video, a shirtless man who’s holding a flame-thrower appears to jump from atop an ice-cream truck onto the roof of an MTA Bus.
He then starts to shoot flames into the air as some people in the background cheer and record him on their cell phones. At the end of this 57-second vid, he jumps off the bus and almost falls into some flames on the ground.
According to the MTA, this flamethrower incident happened on November 8 around 5:30 p.m. There were 25 passengers on board the B26 bus.
No injuries were reported. At the next stop, these passengers were transferred to another bus, officials said.
A different video of this flamethrower stunt was posted to Dupree G.O.D.’s Twitter page on November 10 with the words “Flame Thrower Bus Jump (special effects).” A week earlier, Dupree G.O.D. posted a flamethrower video to his Twitter that did not involve a bus; rather, the vid appeared to show him chasing after friends with this device.
“Me and my boys are playing Spin Da bottle !!! Flame thrower edition,” the caption reads.
“We don’t even need to say how absurd, dangerous and just plain stupid this was. The reckless individual who torched over the top of an occupied bus put New Yorkers, including the bus operator, in life-threatening peril,” MTA spokesman Tim Minton said in a statement to Vulture. “We are grateful the courageous actions of the operator in moving riders to safety minimized risk, and are cooperating fully with the NYPD investigation.”
Flamethrowers are apparently legal in New York state. The New York Post said that there’s proposed legislation in the state Senate that would make possession of a flamethrower a felony.
