Rapper Wiley Hunted By Police 6 Months After Skipping Court
Grime artist Wiley is being hunted by police after failing to appear in court accused of assaulting an ex-world champion kickboxer and breaking into his flat.
The rapper, whose real name is Richard Cowie Jr, didn’t show up to Snaresbrook Crown Court, east London, on November 11 last year.
And yesterday police issued a fresh appeal to find him.
The 42-year-old is accused of breaking into the home of a friend and kickboxer Ali Jacko in Forest Gate, east London, on August 28, and smashing plates before assaulting the boxer.
The rapper’s November no-show came after he failed to appear at a hearing at Thames Magistrates’ Court on September 27.
After that, he released a video online, seen by The Sun, in which the rapper, who was awarded an MBE in 2018 for services to music, said: ‘The police, listen, me to you.
‘Don’t come and get me, don’t look for me. I’ll go down there. I’m going to have a drink, then I’ll go down there.’
Now Newham Police has tweeted an appeal asking the public if they have spotted him anywhere, noting that he frequents the Tower Hamlets area of east London.
The rapper, from Poplar, east London, faces charges of assault by beating and burglary of a dwelling with intent to cause damage.
Mr. Jacko, a former world kickboxing champion, had been relaxing at his home with friends when Cowie Jr allegedly broke in, smashed plates, and assaulted him.
A friend of Mr. Jacko’s called the police after the situation escalated and a row allegedly erupted and Cowie Jr, the self-proclaimed ‘Godfather of Grime’, was later arrested.
Cowie has previously been banned from Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms after going on an anti-Semitic tirade in July 2020 in which he wrote: ‘I don’t care about Hitler, I care about black people’.
He also compared the Jewish community to the Ku Klux Klan.
But it is believed he has since started a new Instagram account under the handle @wileyrecordsceo in which a video shows him asking for work and spending time with friends eating food.
In a video posted on April 18, the camera pans across some speakers and a recording mic before he is heard saying: ‘There’s never no excuse, no excuses trust me. Wherever you are bruv, get it done.
‘Send me some work if you’ve got anything for me to do.’
The account has been active since December last year and in one video posted on December 9, less than one month after he failed to appear in court, Wiley is seen talking over music and saying: ‘Don’t hide, come outside.’
The account also posted a screenshot of a tweet which reads: ‘Omicron was the name of a 1999 video game by Microsoft (Bill Gates) about demons pretending to be humans and harvesting their souls… I’ll just leave that right there…’
The Metropolitan Police charged Wiley, who is understood to have used Mr. Jacko’s recording studio before the pandemic, following the incident on August 28.
Cowie represented himself at an earlier hearing and was granted an adjournment under conditional bail for two weeks so he could find legal aid but has not shown up to court since.
Source: Daily Mail
