A cellphone belonging to David Anthony Burke, better known as the singer D4vd, contained \u201ca significant amount of child pornography,\u201d a prosecutor said in court Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Beth Silverman made the claim during a court proceeding to schedule a preliminary hearing on murder charges in the killing of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez. The images were uncovered as part of a broad series of search warrants executed on Burke\u2019s phone and iCloud, Silverman said. <\/p>\n
Burke\u2019s attorneys have insisted he is innocent and are demanding a preliminary hearing begin next week, meaning evidence in the closely followed case could become public as soon as May 1. He appeared in court Thursday in an orange jail jumpsuit and walked into court with his hands in his pockets. <\/p>\n
A status hearing was set for Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Burke was arrested by Los Angeles police last week and charged Monday with murder, continuous sexual abuse of a child and corpse mutilation,<\/a> according to a criminal complaint. He has pleaded not guilty. <\/p>\n The singer allegedly began sexually abusing Hernandez in September 2023, when she was just 13. Burke\u2019s attorneys have said the case cannot stand up to scrutiny and pushed for the immediate preliminary hearing. <\/p>\n Hernandez was reported missing from her family\u2019s Lake Elsinore neighborhood three times in 2024, and she was spotted at some of D4vd\u2019s concerts during that time frame.<\/p>\n Prosecutors allege Hernandez was last seen at Burke\u2019s Hollywood Hills residence a year ago, on April 23, 2025. She \u201cthreatened to expose his criminal conduct and devastate his musical career,\u201d according to L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman, though the prosecutor has not answered questions about whether Hernandez was going to report Burke to police. <\/p>\n Burke surged in popularity after one of his tracks was included in the wildly popular video game \u201cFortnite,\u201d and he has also collaborated with artists such as 21 Savage. He was beginning to tour in support of his debut album, \u201cWithered,\u201d when reports surfaced linking him to Hernandez\u2019s death. He quickly canceled shows. <\/p>\n The details of the crime echoed some of the violent imagery associated with Burke\u2019s songs. The New York-born vocalist has appeared in a music video<\/a> in which a young woman with an apparent chest wound lies on a bed as the singer hovers over her, blindfolded, his white shirt spattered with blood. In another video,<\/a> \u201cOne More Dance,\u201d D4vd drags a person \u2014 who bears the singer\u2019s likeness \u2014 to a car, where a couple stuffs the person into the trunk.<\/p>\n