The U.S. R&B singer known as D4vd has been taken into police custody on suspicion of murdering a 14-year-old girl, BBC reports. The teenager vanished in 2024 before her severely decomposed body was discovered inside the recording artist’s vehicle in Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) confirmed on Thursday that heavily armed officers arrested the 21-year-old, whose real name is David Anthony Burke. He was detained at approximately 4:30 pm and led away with his hands behind his back. Burke is currently being held without bail with authorities planning to present their case to the District Attorney’s office on Monday.
Despite months of virtual silence from the singer regarding the macabre case, his legal team, comprising Blair Berk, Marilyn Bednarski and Regina Peter, released a statement defending him. They proclaimed his innocence by insisting that the actual evidence will show he did not murder Celeste Rivas Hernandez and was not the cause of her death.
A grisly discovery
The grim sequence of events came to light on September 8, 2025 when the teenager’s remains were found in a body bag inside the front boot of a dented 2023 Tesla Model Y registered to Burke.
The vehicle had been parked in the affluent Bird Streets neighbourhood of the Hollywood Hills for several weeks before being removed to a vehicle pound. Staff at the Hollywood tow yard quickly contacted the police after noticing a foul odour and swarming flies around the car.
Rivas Hernandez was just a 13-year-old schoolgirl when her family first reported her missing in April 2024. She lived in Lake Elsinore, a city roughly 75 miles away from where her body was eventually recovered. A first-generation daughter of El Salvadoran immigrants, neighbours fondly remembered her as a familiar face who visited the local corner shop almost every day to buy sweets and fizzy drinks.
The county coroner noted her body was too severely decomposed to immediately establish a cause of death but suggested she had been dead for several weeks prior to discovery. Authorities initially treated the situation strictly as a death investigation.
Escalating legal trouble
Burke’s arrest marks the most significant development since a grand jury began reviewing evidence in December under strict secrecy. A judge had previously sealed the teenager’s death records to prioritise police access to the coroner’s findings.
However, the veil of secrecy slipped when Burke’s father, mother and brother challenged court summonses in Texas. Legal filings from that familial dispute confirmed Burke was the primary target of the Los Angeles investigation and faced potential proceedings for a single count of murder.
Publicly released details about the victim’s appearance have fuelled intense online speculation. When discovered, Rivas Hernandez was wearing a tube top, small black leggings and specific jewellery. Most strikingly, she bore a «Shhh…» tattoo on her index finger that almost perfectly matched a tattoo on the singer’s own finger.
The unfolding scandal has severely impacted Burke’s previously soaring career. The artist skyrocketed to fame in 2022 when his track Romantic Homicide went viral on TikTok and led to a major record deal with Darkroom/Interscope Records. Following the dark discovery in his abandoned car, he abruptly cancelled his world tour and stepped away from the public eye.
Police subsequently raided his Hollywood Hills mansion while major brands such as Crocs and Hollister dropped him from their marketing campaigns. Fellow artist Kali Uchis has also removed their collaborative track Crashing from streaming platforms in the wake of the controversy.
