The singer D4vd, whose real name is David Anthony Burke, has been arrested in connection with the death of a teenage girl whose body was found in the trunk of his Tesla last year, police in Los Angeles say.
In a statement, the Los Angeles Police Department said that Burke, 21, is being held without bail on suspicion of murder in the killing of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez.
Burke was arrested on Thursday by members of the LAPD’s Robbery Homicide Division at a home in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles.
The LAPD said investigators will present a case on Monday to prosecutors at the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, who will determine whether there is enough evidence to file charges.
Armed officers approach a home in the Hollywood Hills.
(LAPD via X)
Burke’s attorneys said they were prepared to “vigorously defend David’s innocence.”
“Let us be clear — the actual evidence in this case will show that David Burke did not murder Celeste Rivas Hernandez and he was not the cause of her death,” Burke’s attorneys said in a statement, adding: “There has been no indictment returned by any grand jury in this case and no criminal complaint filed. David has only been detained under suspicion.”
How the lurid case unfolded
Rivas Hernandez was reported missing in April 2024, when she disappeared from her home Lake Elsinore, Calif., about 70 miles southeast of Los Angeles.
Her body was found on Sept. 8 in a Tesla registered to Burke that had been towed to an impound lot from the Hollywood Hills, where it had been parked for several weeks after seemingly being abandoned.
Officers responded to the tow yard after someone reported smelling a strong odor coming from the vehicle.
Inside the front trunk, detectives found a plastic bag containing “a decomposed head and torso,” according to court documents. A second bag containing dismembered body parts was also found inside the vehicle.
Forensics later determined the remains were those of Rivas Hernandez.
LAPD Captain and Commanding Officer Scot M. Williams told People magazine that it was likely she had been dead for “several weeks prior to her body being discovered.”
No cause of death has been publicly revealed.
D4vd performs at Coachella in Indio, Calif., in 2025.
(Arturo Holmes/Getty Images)
D4vd, pronounced “David,” rose to fame on Tiktok, where he has 3.6 million followers. The Texas-born singer’s blend of indie rock, R&B and lo-fi alt-pop produced a string of viral hits, including 2022’s “Romantic Homicide,” which has more than 1 billion streams on Spotify. He signed with Interscope Records, a subsidiary of Universal Music Group.
At the time of the gruesome discovery, D4vd was performing in Minneapolis as part of a world tour in support of his first full-length album, Withered.
After the medical examiner identified the body as being that of Rivas Hernandez, the tour was canceled.
Why did it take so long for an arrest?
On Sept. 17, police served a search warrant at the Hollywood Hills home where Burke had been staying. TMZ reported that LAPD homicide detectives walked out of the house with a computer and several evidence bags.
“We know for sure that Celeste Rivas Hernandez died and someone placed her body in the front trunk area of David Burke’s Tesla,” Williams, the LAPD captain, told People. “The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner has not determined a cause or manner of her death, so we don’t know for sure if anyone has any criminal culpability for her death beyond the concealment of her dead body,”
At that point in the investigation, a spokesman for the singer said he was “fully cooperating with authorities.” By November, he had stopped cooperating, according to NBC News.
According to the Associated Press, Burke had been under investigation by an L.A. County grand jury looking into the death of Rivas Hernandez since at least February.
But he was not officially named a suspect until his arrest on Thursday.
“We came to the home with a probable cause arrest warrant for him,” Williams told a California Post reporter at the scene. “We did the best we can to keep tabs on him, but once we developed probable cause to arrest him for murder, then we were on him pretty diligently.”
