A woman has been arrested in connection with the Bay Area killing of a rapper who she had “wrongfully” identified as the suspect in the shooting death of her boyfriend in Southern California last year, police said Tuesday.
Amanda Young, 29, of Torrance is the second suspect taken into custody in connection with a Dec. 19 homicide in San Mateo. Her boyfriend’s brother, Isaiah Reupena, 34, was apprehended in Oklahoma earlier this month, according to a news release from the San Mateo Police Department.
The victim, Melota Lasi — who performed under the name Cutty Banks — was shot to death at a Wells Fargo parking lot. The San Mateo resident was misidentified as the person who killed Lewis Reupena last August following a “street investigation” involving the suspects, the release stated.
Lewis Reupena — Isaiah Reupena’s brother and Young’s boyfriend — was fatally shot while driving on the 405 Freeway in Seal Beach on the evening of Aug. 29, 2020, the Orange County Register reported. San Mateo police described the deadly shooting as a “road rage incident.”
The shooter was believed to have been in a white Mercedes S500 or S550 model, the California Highway Patrol told KTLA after Reupena’s killing. A suspect description was not released at the time.
Young began her own “amateur investigation” into the homicide and provided information to her boyfriend’s family which convinced Isaiah Reupena that Lasi was the culprit, according to officials. He then drove to San Mateo where he allegedly shot the victim in what authorities described as an act of revenge.
But CHP’s own investigation confirmed Lasi had nothing to do with the road rage shooting, police said.
The Bay Area agency emphasized that the case of mistaken identity “[resulted] in [Lasi’s] death as retaliation.”
After the December killing, Reupena subsequently moved from Southern California to Oklahoma.
Following a monthslong investigation by police, he was arrested on suspicion of homicide at his home in Blanchard on April 1.
Young also briefly moved to Oklahoma with Reupena’s family, but later returned to Torrance. She was arrested there on April 15.
Police did not release a booking photo of either suspect.
