Attorney General will be a no-show at EBR School Board meeting after complaint about rapper's video
BATON ROUGE — After announcing plans to attend Thursday's East Baton Rouge Parish School Board meeting to discuss her concerns about a rapper who recorded a video with students mimicking gun play, Louisiana's attorney general says she cannot make it to the meeting after all.
Liz Murrill said a scheduling conflict would prevent her meeting with school board members. She said she previously held "productive discussions" with the board's lawyer and said the district was working to avoid a repeat.
WBRZ reported last month that David Catherine, known as RealBleeda, visited Park Forest Middle School and donated a PlayStation 5 along with snacks for standardized testing. A video recorded in the school gym showed children imitating pointing a gun at the camera.
The attorney general said school principal Xavier Rawls-Stromile showed "exceptionally bad judgment" and that she wanted the board to explain how the principal came to invite the rapper to the campus. A school source told WBRZ that the principal knew Catherine as a rap artist and didn't know of any purported involvement with criminal acts.
Court records show Catherine, 22, is out on bond for a January drug and weapons arrest. Law enforcement said Catherine is a member of the Bleedas gang. A district spokesman said last month that visits to campuses are arranged on a school-by-school basis.