SAN FRANCISCO — Bay Area rapper AB Milli has been released from federal custody after serving more than a year behind bars on a federal gun case, records show.
The San Francisco-based rapper, whose real name is Albert Collins Jr. pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm and was sentenced to 17 to 14 months in federal prison last November. Since Collins had been in prison since November 2021, he only had a few weeks left. According to Bureau of Prison records, he was released on December 11.
Collins was arrested on November 2, 2021 by the San Francisco Police Department, who pulled over a BMW he was driving on Sunnydale Avenue and Hahn Street and searched him for a parole that allowed a search without a warrant. Prosecutors say officers recognized Collins as a known gang member and decided to pull him over based on that.
Collins is said to have briefly run away from the police, and when he was arrested said, “You guys got me” and “the gun’s in the trash.” One officer found a gun under a parked Audi and another in the leg of Collins’ jeans, prosecutors wrote in court records.
In a sentencing memo, Collins’ attorney Scott Sugarman wrote that Collins had a “gruesome background” but redacted many details of it. He wrote that Collins had to overcome “mountains of pain, anxiety, depression and stress”.
“What other child was in the room while their mother stabbed another person to death, covered the child in blood, and was called a few years later to see his father’s bullet-ridden body lying dead near him during, of all times , the Christmas and New Year holidays,” Sugarman wrote. “His father was shot in a drive-by shooting while taking Mr. Collins’ sister to the candy store.”
In 2005, Collins’ mother was charged with murder for stabbing to death a friend, David Sample, 25, who allegedly stabbed her in the neck earlier in the evening, according to media reports at the time. Two years later, Albert Collins Jr.’s father, Albert Collins Sr., was shot and killed while using his own body to shield his daughter from gunfire. In the aftermath, he was hailed as a hero.
Prosecutors asked for a 15-month prison sentence for Albert Collins Jr., which would have kept him in custody until early 2023. In a motion filed last year to keep Collins in jail while the case was pending, prosecutors cited rap lyrics recorded nearly a decade ago in which Collins alluded to shooting with guns.
A diss record recorded by Collins and others became the focus of a 2018 murder trial in Contra Costa County. Prosecutors argued that Collins and fellow Bay Area rapper Yatta accused Mario “NastyO” Pitteard of snitching on someone in a burglary case. Pitteard retaliated by recruiting three other San Francisco gang members and attempting to kill one of Yatta and Collins’ friends, authorities claimed.
The result was a 2016 highway shooting on Highway 4 in Pittsburg, where 25-year-old Shanique Marie, a Vallejo resident — a mother of four — was killed when she rode in the car alongside the intended victim. Pitteard and co-defendant Marcus Gaines accepted plea deals after a wild trial that ended with the death of a juror. Two other suspects were released after prosecutors dropped charges against them.