Elsewhere: Reality TV Contestant Jamal Trulove Found Guilty of Murder SF Weekly, Ex-reality show contestant convicted of murder Chron
An aspiring rapper and one-time reality TV contestant was convicted today of first-degree murder for fatally shooting another man in San Francisco in 2007.
A San Francisco Superior Court jury this afternoon found Jamal Rashead Trulove, 29, guilty of murdering Seu Kuka, 28, of San Francisco, on July 23, 2007. He was also found guilty of being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.
Trulove hung his head and wept quietly as the verdict was read.
Kuka was shot dead at the Sunnydale public housing projects on Blythedale Avenue in San Francisco’s Visitacion Valley neighborhood. Trulove was arrested in October 2008 in Seaside in Monterey County on a $5 million murder warrant.
Trulove appeared on the VH1 reality show “I Love New York 2,” which aired between October and December 2007. The program was filmed in Los Angeles at the beginning of July that year, just three weeks before the murder.
At trial, a single witness–a woman now in witness protection–testified that she saw Trulove shoot Kuka. Trulove’s attorney questioned the woman’s credibility after she admitted to initially lying to police about how certain she was that Trulove was the shooter.
The woman testified that more than 20 other people also saw the shooting but failed to come forward.
Prosecutors said Kuka was chasing Trulove’s brother through the projects when he ran into Trulove, knocking him down.
Trulove then got up and shot Kuka in the back, and then in the head multiple times, prosecutors said.
Trulove was one of several men vying for the affections of Tiffany “New York” Pollard, a reality TV veteran who herself is a former contestant on the “Flavor of Love” reality show starring rapper Flavor Flav.
Trulove, who went by “Milliown,” “True” and “Jamal Bryant” on the show, was kicked off the program at the end of the first episode after he argued with another contestant.
He is originally from San Francisco but was living in Oakland at the time of the murder.
He now faces life in prison at his sentencing March 19.
