Report: Rapper’s embalmed body propped up on club stage for homegoing celebration

The embalmed body of a slain rapper was propped upright onstage Sunday inside a Washington D.C. nightclub as friends and family celebrated his life, according to news reports.

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Markelle Morrow, who went by the stage name Goonew, was shot and killed last month in Maryland. His death remains an open homicide investigation.

Videos of the homegoing celebration went viral soon after they were posted on social media outlets. They show people listening to music and dancing around the stage where the body was propped up.

The rapper’s family defended the event, held at the Bliss nightclub in Washington.

“For all the negatives, people probably don’t even know nothing about us,” Morrow’s mother Patrice Morrow told Fox 5 DC. “They have no idea. People just saying what they want to say and that’s fine. That’s perfectly fine. I’m pleased with how I sent my son away. I wish people would just let me grieve in peace.”

In an Instagram post on Monday, Bliss apologized for what happened at the venue, saying they were contacted by a funeral home, but “never made aware of what would transpire.”

“We sincerely apologize to all those who may be upset or offended,” the statement reads.

“We’re not trying to clear anything up,” Ariana Morrow, Goonew’s sister, said. “We don’t care about anybody and what you all have to say negative. Nobody. We don’t care.

“They’re like, I know his mama wouldn’t approve of that. Yeah, she did, she was on stage with us.”

Some on social media speculated that the body was a wax dummy, but a rapper who performed at the celebration said the body was Morrow’s.

Black Fortune, who performed at the event, wrote in an Instagram Story: “No this ain’t no wax figure my Brodie went out gansta.”

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