Three arrested for murder of Florida rapper Julio Foolio

Three people have been arrested and two others are being sought for the ambush killing of Florida rapper Julio Foolio last month, officials said.

The 26-year-old victim, whose legal name was Charles Jones, died on 23 June after his vehicle came under a barrage of gunfire in a car park of a hotel in Tampa.

Hotel surveillance footage released by police shows the attackers dressed in black wearing masks as they take up their positions in the car park, opening fire with two semi-automatic rifles and one pistol.

The rapper was killed during a weekend of birthday events that he had previously announced on social media.

Isaiah Chance, 21, Alicia Andrews, 21, and Sean Gathright, 18 were all arrested over the weekend and face murder charges, police said.

Two more people – Davion Murphy, 27, and Rashad Murphy, 30 – also face similar charges but have yet to be found and arrested.

Three other people were injured, but survived the attack, Tampa Police Chief Lee Bercaw said in a news conference on Monday.

In addition to the hotel’s CCTV footage, detectives also used licence plate reader and phone logs to identify the suspects.

The attackers allegedly were members of two different gangs – ATK and Twelve Hundred – which had worked together to co-ordinate the attack.

Jones was a member of the Six Block Gang, Chief Bercaw said.

In the hours before his death, the rapper had been posting material to Instagram about his birthday celebrations, writing that police had “shut us down”.

Rapper Foolio has nearly a million monthly listeners on Spotify, where his top-played track is Voo Doo.

As recently as April, he wrote in an Instagram post that recent months had been “tragic”, citing “multiple attempts on my life”.

He is said to have been open about his gang affiliations, according to local media.