Takeoff killed by ‘senseless violence and a stray bullet,’ Migos’ record label says
No one disputes that Migos are one of the most important rap groups of the past decade, and they’ve been at the center of a lot of that attention. The group and its label, Cash Money, have been involved with some controversies and disputes of their own, but they’ve never been more controversial than when they were caught up in a helicopter crash in late 2014.
The group was working the final song of their 2014 album, Culture II, at a private hangar in the Bahamas when a helicopter carrying five people took off from the island but was never seen again. The pilot, identified by the FBI as Travis McCoy, and the copilot, identified as Eric Bellinger, were reported to have been killed.
But then in June of 2015, the U.S. government, citing its investigation, confirmed what’s now known to be true in a statement: the deaths were the result of a “single-engine, fixed-gear, propeller-driven aircraft accident.”
The government said it had not released the names of the victims, but it said one survivor had been shot to death. According to the report of its investigation, a single bullet, “taken from a high-powered rifle,” tore through McCoys and Bellinger, killing the helicopter’s pilot and wounding their co-pilot.
The government’s investigation also turned up a video by a drone operator captured in the Bahamas that seemed to show the helicopter crash. The video showed the helicopter flying at high speeds over the ground before crashing.
The evidence led to a criminal investigation into the crash and the U.S. Attorney,“in consultation with the investigative agent from the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives,” which investigated the crash.
The government was in possession of video evidence, but it never turned it over to the investigation, and no one at the government agency had been contacted by the group.
It would take another nine months for the group and its label,
