A man was arrested on Wednesday in connection with the death of rapper Nicki Minaj’s father.
The musician’s father, Robert Maraj, was walking along a road in Mineola, Long Island, at 6:15 pm on Friday, when he was hit by a car that was going on, Nassau County police said.
Charles Polevich, 70, faces charges of leaving the scene of an incident and tampering with physical evidence related to the death of Robert Maraj, 64, in Long Island, New York, last week.
He supposedly stopped briefly to ask Maraj if he was okay, but he didn’t ask for help.
Polevich, who divides his time between Long Island and Guam, is free on bail after an indictment in the Nassau County court. As a result of his arrest, his driver’s license was suspended, he was forced to hand over his passport and a judge said he could not leave the state.
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“He was absolutely aware of what happened,” Nassau County Police Detective Lieutenant Stephen Fitzpatrick told a news conference.
“He got out of the car and looked at the deceased, got in his car and made the conscious decision to get out instead of dialing 911, instead of calling an ambulance for the man,” said Fitzpatrick. “He went home and isolated the vehicle. He is well aware of what he did.”
The father of rapper Nicki Minaj, 64, died after being hit by a driver who fled and ran over in New York, police said. Robert Maraj was walking along a road in Mineola, Long Island, at 6:15 pm on Friday, when he was hit by a car moving on, Nassau County police said.
(Matt Sayles / Invision / AP, Archive)
A message asking for comments was left with Polevich’s lawyer.
Maraj was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead on Saturday, February 13.
Polevich got out of his car after hitting Maraj, stopped on top of him and asked if he was okay before he got back to his car and ran away, the police said. Polevich went home and parked his car in a separate garage in an attempt to hide it from view, police said.
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Polevich surrendered on Wednesday after detectives used pieces of surveillance video to track the car involved in the accident – a 1992 Volvo station wagon – to Polevich’s home in Mineola, said Fitzpatrick.
Minaj, 38, was born Onika Tanya Maraj in Trinidad and raised in the Queens neighborhood of New York. She made no public statement about her father’s death.
Minaj spoke in the past about having a strained relationship with her father.
In interviews, she said that Robert Maraj suffered from drug addiction and was abusive to his mother, since he set the house on fire with her inside.
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Minaj made reference to her father in the 2008 song, “Autobiography”, saying, “They should have thrown the book at you, because I hate you so much that it burns when I look at you”.
Robert Maraj called his daughter’s claims “exaggerated”.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.