Singer D4vd was arrested Thursday on suspicion of murder in connection with the death of Celeste Rivas Hernandez, a teenager whose decomposed body was found inside the front trunk of his Tesla at a Hollywood tow yard in September 2025.
The Los Angeles Police Department announced the arrest via social media on April 16, 2026. The singer, whose real name is David Anthony Burke, is 21 years old and is being held without bail.
The case will be presented to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office on Monday for filing consideration. An attorney for Burke did not respond to requests for comment.
The arrest comes seven months after Celeste’s body was found, six months after D4vd was publicly identified as a suspect, and weeks after he was formally named the target of a Los Angeles County grand jury murder investigation.
It ends a period in which the investigation moved publicly and inexorably in one direction while charges remained formally absent, a gap that closes today.
Who Was Celeste Rivas Hernandez?
Celeste Abigail Rivas Hernandez was 14 years old when she died. She was from Lake Elsinore, California, a small city in western Riverside County southeast of Los Angeles.
Her parents had immigrated from El Salvador. She was reported missing multiple times in the final year of her life, first reported gone in April 2024, when she was 13.
Her mother told reporters she had a boyfriend named David. Her brother told NBC4 that the last time anyone saw her, she was going to a movie with D4vd. She never came back.
She last contacted her family in May 2024. Surveillance footage and digital evidence would later show she was still alive as late as January 2025.
In June 2024, she was photographed backstage at a sold-out D4vd show at the Fonda Theater in Los Angeles, having been reported missing months earlier.
On September 8, 2025, one day after what would have been her 15th birthday, workers at Hollywood Tow, a tow yard in Hollywood, called the LAPD because of a foul odor coming from an impounded vehicle.
Officers opened the front trunk, known as a frunk, of a 2023 Tesla. Inside, in a black bag, were the severely decomposed and dismembered remains of Celeste Rivas Hernandez.
The medical examiner would later report she was wearing black leggings, a tube top, a yellow metal chain bracelet and stud earrings. The cause of death has not been publicly disclosed.
The medical examiner’s file was placed under court seal in November 2025 at the LAPD’s request, citing risks to the investigation.
The Tesla had been registered to D4vd. It had been left abandoned in the Hollywood Hills for over a month before neighbors reported it and it was towed on September 5, 2025.
Who Is D4vd?
David Anthony Burke was born June 6, 2005 in Houston, Texas. He built his early music career making songs for Fortnite montage videos on TikTok, a genuinely unusual origin story that positioned him at the center of a generation of online music listeners who discovered artists through short video rather than radio.
His 2022 single “Romantic Homicide” broke through on TikTok and crossed into the global charts, reaching the top 40 in the United Kingdom and multiple other countries.
“Here With Me” followed. He signed to Darkroom Records and Interscope, played Coachella in April 2025, and was preparing to tour behind his debut album Withered when his world changed.
A week after Celeste’s body was found in his car, D4vd cancelled his remaining tour dates.
His track “What Are You Waiting For,” which had appeared on the in-game playlist for Madden NFL 26, was quietly removed. He appeared to have been removed from the Darkroom Records artist roster.
He retained a criminal defense attorney known for representing celebrities and initially cooperated with investigators, then, according to an LAPD source speaking to NBC4 in November 2025, became uncooperative as the investigation intensified.
The Investigation
The connection between D4vd and Celeste Rivas emerged through multiple channels, each adding a layer to the picture that prosecutors spent months building for the grand jury.
Both D4vd and Celeste had identical tattoos on their index fingers reading “Shhh.” The tattoo on Celeste’s finger was reported by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner.
The same tattoo appears in D4vd’s music videos and social media posts. Celeste’s mother identified her daughter partly by that tattoo. D4vd’s defense lawyers described the connection as a coincidence.
CNN geolocated photographs placing D4vd’s black Tesla a few blocks from Celeste’s home in Lake Elsinore between January and March 2024. In August 2024, a Discord message to Burke asked when he was going to “drop the song about the missing girl.”
An unreleased track apparently titled “Celeste” circulated online in December 2023 and again after her body was found in September 2025, attributed to D4vd though not independently confirmed.
Prosecutors allege Burke, along with at least one accomplice, dismembered Celeste’s body before placing it in the Tesla.
The manager of Burke’s record label, Robert Morgenroth, spent several days testifying before the grand jury, questioned particularly about Burke’s activities in August 2025 and why authorities had not been informed of certain information earlier.
In January 2026, grand jury subpoenas were issued to D4vd’s father Dawud Burke, his mother Colleen Burke, and his brother Caleb Burke, ordering them to testify.
In court documents that became public through a filing made in Texas, outside the sealing protections applied in California, prosecutors formally described Burke as the target of a grand jury inquiry into one count of murder, stating he “may be involved in having committed” the crime.
Neo Langston, a 23-year-old streamer described as a close friend of D4vd, was arrested in Montana in January 2026 for failing to appear as a witness.
He was extradited to Los Angeles and reportedly gave approximately 40 minutes of grand jury testimony in February 2026.
He subsequently broke his silence publicly, referring to Celeste as a “victim” and saying the case was about “getting justice for the victim and her family.”
Legal analysts described his cooperation as a potential “nightmare” for any defense Burke might mount.
The arrest on Thursday is described as on suspicion of murder, meaning formal charges have not yet been filed.
That happens Monday, when the case goes to the District Attorney’s office. What is charged, and how many counts, will become public at or following his arraignment.
Celeste Rivas Hernandez was 14 years old. She had been missing for nearly a year and a half before her body was found. She is the center of this story.
That’s a shocking story. I wonder what led to such a tragic situation.