Rod Wave has been released from jail and seen his recent gun case dropped after police admitted that the charges were “not accurate.”
According to the Tampa Bay Times, the rapper/singer (born Rodarius Green) was freed from police custody on Wednesday (March 3) just hours after being arrested on two counts of illegally possessing a firearm as a convicted felon.
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St. Petersburg Police Department spokesperson Yolanda Fernandez confirmed late Wednesday that the arrest affidavit was incorrect.
“He was arrested on a charge that was later determined not to be accurate, so he was released,” she said. “This investigation is still open, it’s still ongoing and we are still looking to arrest more people and additional charges could be forthcoming.”
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St. Petersburg Police did not specify what led to the charges against Rod Wave.
The probable cause affidavit for his arrest says police searched his Palmetto, Florida home on Wednesday and found live ammunition and a slide to a handgun.
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“The entire basis of that allegation was that the ammunition was on a kitchen counter or a table adjacent to a folder that had some papers with his name inside. That’s it,” Rod’s lawyer Mark Rankin said. “That’s certainly not enough to charge somebody and certainly not enough to convict him.”
Rankin also disputed his client’s alleged past conviction, saying: “If you took two minutes to look at his record online, you would see that he’s not a convicted felon. And these are police officers that know how to check somebody’s criminal record.
“They cited a specific case in the affidavit to get him arrested, but if you look at that case, he was charged with a felony and then it was reduced to a misdemeanor. It takes two clicks to see that.”
The arrest affidavit says the SoulFly star was convicted of a felony in November 2017 for carrying a concealed firearm, but court records show he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of carrying a concealed weapon.
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Rod’s arrest stemmed was in connection with a shooting outside of a St. Petersburg club on Sunday night (March 31). Police said four people were shot after a group of men got into an argument, with the victims suffering non-life-threatening injuries.
He was initially held without bond before his release.
