The Mo3 Murder Trials: Yella Beezy, the I-35 Ambush, and the Gunman on Trial Now

On November 11, 2020, in the middle of the day, the Dallas rapper Mo3 — Melvin Noble, 28, one of the city's biggest rising stars — was forced to a stop on Interstate 35E near the Dallas Zoo. He got out of his car and ran down the freeway. A gunman chased him and shot him in front of lunchtime traffic. He died at a hospital that afternoon.

Nearly six years later, the case built on that ambush has become one of the most consequential prosecutions in hip-hop — because the man the state says paid for the killing is another Dallas star: Yella Beezy. And this week, the first of the trials is finally underway.

The three defendants

Prosecutors describe a murder-for-hire chain — a structure that will sound familiar to anyone following the Bridegan trials or the Lil Durk case:

• Kewon White — the alleged gunman, charged with capital murder. Arrested in December 2020, weeks after the shooting, he has been in custody in the years since. His trial is underway now: jury selection began August 24, 2026, before Judge Chika Anyiam, with 77 prospective jurors and opening statements expected within days.
• Devin Brown — also charged with capital murder. Prosecutors say he was in the car with White and appears on surveillance video approaching Noble in a ski mask.
• Markies Conway — Yella Beezy — charged with capital murder while remuneration, Texas's murder-for-hire statute, on the allegation that he hired the killing done. He has been on house arrest since March on a $750,000 bond, his attorneys maintain his innocence, and his own trial date is not yet firm.

Every one of them has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent. No one has been convicted in Mo3's death.

What the state has to prove — and the lyrics fight

A murder-for-hire case is a conspiracy case, and conspiracy cases live or die on the connective tissue: phones, money, and witnesses. The pretrial fight that tells you where this one is headed is about a different kind of evidence — rap lyrics. Whether lyrics can be treated as proof of the alleged plot has been a central battle, and Judge Anyiam has already handed the defense a win, refusing to let a Dallas detective testify as a "music expert."

If that fight sounds familiar, it should: in the federal Lil Durk trial — running in Los Angeles at this very moment — prosecutors originally cited lyrics too, then backed away after the defense showed the cited verse was recorded before the shooting it supposedly described. Two courtrooms, two juries, the same question the legal system still hasn't settled: when is a rap lyric a confession, and when is it just a song?

The stakes could not be higher. Capital murder in Texas carries exactly two outcomes on conviction: life without parole, or death.

The feud underneath it

The state's theory sits on top of a long-running, very public conflict between two artists who came up in the same city — Mo3's melodic street records had made him Dallas's breakout voice (his posthumous Boosie Badazz collaboration became his biggest national hit), while Yella Beezy was the city's established star. The details of what prosecutors say motivated the alleged hit will come out at trial; what's already public is the structure they allege: a payment, a crew, and an ambush executed on a freeway in daylight.

Why this trial matters beyond Dallas

Count the murder-for-hire cases in American courtrooms this month: Mario Fernandez, convicted August 26 in the Bridegan ambush. Lil Durk, on trial federally in Los Angeles. And now Kewon White, with Yella Beezy's trial behind it. Three prosecutions, one legal architecture — alleged paymasters, alleged shooters, and states trying to prove the order was given without anyone who heard it given. The verdicts will land within weeks of each other, and together they'll say a great deal about whether juries convict on that architecture. We track every date on our court dates tracker.

Why this case file matters

Mo3 was 28, a father, and by every account at the peak of his rise when he died running down a freeway in daylight. His killing sits in the same grim lineage as the deaths that shadow the Lil Durk case — artists whose feuds moved from records to retaliation. However these juries rule, the Mo3 trials — the gunman's now, Yella Beezy's next — will be the fullest courtroom accounting yet of what that pipeline costs. This page updates as the White trial unfolds and when verdicts land.

Case status as of this writing: Kewon White, Devin Brown, and Markies Conway have each pleaded not guilty to capital murder charges and are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty; White's trial began jury selection August 24, 2026, and Conway awaits trial on bond. This article is based on court proceedings and contemporaneous reporting by KERA, FOX 4 Dallas, NBC 5 DFW, and others. Featured image: AI illustration of a Dallas freeway at dusk created for this article; it does not depict real persons or the actual scene.