A Manhattan federal judge on Tuesday sentenced James “Jimmy Henchman” Rosemond already serving a life sentence for running a drug empire to a second life term in prison for his December conviction as mastermind of the 2009 Bronx murder of Bloods street gang member Lowell Fletcher.
Judge Colleen McMahon called Rosemond’s crimes “heinous” but lamented to the 50-year-old that “there’s nothing I can do to alter your fate.”
Rosemond who declined to address McMahon before being sentenced targeted Fletcher for his affiliation with the rap group G-Unit with which Rosemond had been feuding. Rosemond wanted someone to pay for his teen son being slapped by G-Unit co-founder Tony Yayo in 2007, authorities said.
The attack on Rosemond’s then-14-year-old son occurred after Yayo, fellow co-founder 50 Cent and others in the G-Unit crew spotted him in Manhattan wearing a shirt that advertised his father’s rival music management company Czar Entertainment, police sources said.
Yayo, whose real name is Marvin Bernard, was harassing the kid at the direction of 50 Cent, allegedly showing a gun tucked into his waist. He then pushed the kid up against a wall, started asking him why he was wearing the shirt and smacked him.
For two years after the assault, Rosemond tried to make good on his vendetta, prosecutors said.
This included organizing at least three failed drive-by shootings aimed at G-Unit associates, including one outside radio station Hot 97’s offices in Manhattan.
Prosecutors say Rosemond paid off Brian “Slim” McCleod with a “slab” of cocaine worth $30,000 to lure Fletcher to a Bronx street corner in September 2009 where fellow thug Derrick “D” Grant pumped bullets into Fletcher.
Rosemond who has long been suspected of involvement in the 1994 non-fatal shooting of slain rap icon Tupac Shakur in Manhattan once mingled with the likes of Jay-Z, Akon and Sean Combs.
He was found guilty by a federal jury in Brooklyn in 2013 of using his thriving record label as a front for a coast-to-coast cocaine ring.