A 15-year-old killed Pop Smoke — then got caught smuggling fentanyl into juvenile hall

A man who was previously convicted of murdering the rapper Pop Smoke was sentenced Thursday to four years in prison for smuggling fentanyl into an Los Angeles County juvenile facility.

Deijae Jester, 21, pleaded no contest to possessing 25 fentanyl-laced pills that his mother smuggled into Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall during a visit on Dec. 14, 2025.

The 2020 killing of Pop Smoke, whose real name was Bashar Jackson, occurred when Jester was 15 years old, according to a sentencing memo written by prosecutors. After his conviction for the homicide, prosecutors said, Jester was confined in the Sylmar facility, which has been beset with drug abuse, violence and absent staff.

During a preliminary hearing in 2021, Los Angeles Police Department detectives testified that Jester and three others broke into Jackson’s Hollywood Hills rental and accosted the rapper in a shower.

Detectives learned what happened next from Jester himself. Placed in a jail cell wired with hidden microphones, Jester bragged to his cellmate that when Jackson tried to fight back, he pistol-whipped the rapper and shot him three times in the back.

The killers made off with Jackson’s diamond-encrusted watch, which they hawked for $2,000, a detective said at the hearing.

Jester, a reputed member of the 107 Hoover Criminals gang called “Lil Bam Bam,” was convicted of Jackson’s murder in 2023, according to the prosecutors’ memo.

While held at the juvenile hall in Sylmar, Jester met his mother, Nickia Randall, for the first time, his lawyer wrote in a sentencing memo. According to the memo, Randall gave birth to Jester while she was jailed on homicide charges.

“Deijae was literally set up for failure,” his lawyer, Theida Salazar, wrote.

Jester was raised by his paternal grandmother. When Randall was released from prison in 2021 after serving a lengthy sentence, her son was in juvenile hall on a murder charge, according to Salazar’s memo.

Randall, now 48, was allowed to visit her son despite having prior convictions for manslaughter, assault and cruelty to a child, and having a warrant for her arrest issued by San Bernardino County authorities, according to an investigative report.

During the visit, guards saw Randall try to pass a blue balloon to her son, a deputy probation officer wrote in the report. They seized the balloon, which contained 25 blue pills and a “small amount of blue powder,” the report said.

A California prison guard smuggled 20 kilograms of cocaine from Mexico to a stash house in Rowland Heights, prosecutors allege.

Randall hasn’t entered a plea to the narcotics charges because she is in custody in San Bernardino County, Deputy Dist. Atty. Nathalie Garcia said.