The man who helped shoot Young Dolph has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after years of delays and security issues at the prison.
Nearly five years after the Memphis rapper was shot to death inside a cookie shop, the murder case of Young Dolph is closed.
Cornelius Smith made his final court appearance on May 15 and admitted firing multiple rounds at Makeda’s Cookies on November 17, 2021.
His plea hearing was delayed multiple times due to security issues within the Tennessee Department of Corrections, leaving him in legal limbo before he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Smith testified under oath that he lost count of how many times he shot young Dolph and described a scene of pure violence in the cookie store.
He identified himself and accomplice Justin Johnson in surveillance footage, confirmed they arrived in a stolen Mercedes and recounted the entire operation in chilling detail.
Johnson was convicted in September 2024 and sentenced to life in prison plus 50 years in prison, but Smith has been cooperating with authorities and testifying against other defendants.
Smith testified that Yo Gotti’s brother Big Jook offered Young Dolph $100,000, which the shooters accepted in hopes of landing a recording deal with his CMG label.
Smith and Johnson were supposed to receive $40,000 each, while the alleged mastermind, Hernandez Govan, received $20,000. Smith received only $800 before his arrest.
According to AllHipHop, Govan was acquitted in August 2025, meaning Govan, who prosecutors claimed masterminded everything, was free.
Big Jock himself was killed in another shooting in January 2024, which remains unsolved and no arrests have been made.
The feud between Young Dolph’s Paper Route Empire and Yo Gotti’s CMG dates back more than a decade and has been the scene of multiple shootings.
In 2017, more than 100 rounds were fired at Young Dolph’s bulletproof SUV in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Later that year, he was shot and killed outside the Loews Hollywood Hotel in Los Angeles, allegedly by a known associate of Yo Gotti. Young Dolph survived two attacks, released his Bulletproof album, and kept going until one day in November 2021, he was shot 22 times in a cookie shop.
