YoungBoy Never Broke Again moved to a mansion in Huntsville, Utah, in 2022 to get away from it all after he was sentenced to house arrest in a 2020 Louisiana gun case. The change of locations initially has righteous intentions but ended badly after YB was arrested and recently sentenced to almost two years in prison after being hit with firearm and prescription drug fraud charges. But how did YB end up in Utah in the first place?

The answer is deeper than one may think and has origins when the rapper was in middle school. Then in the sixth grade at Baton Rouge’s Capital Middle School, YB was in an AmeriCorps program for kids with indicators that they may not graduate high school, according to KSL.com. It was there he was paired with counselor Kyrie Garcia who took a liking to the pre-teen.

“He’s a jokester. He’s funny. He’s pranky. … He would go prank my roommate, and he’d go pour water on him, like he’s just a funny kid,” Garcia tells KSL.

Garcia eventually became YB’s godmother. When the program was over, he visited Garcia in her Utah hometown.

“That was the first time he’d ever been on a plane or out of the south,” Garcia added. “His mother] saw it as a good opportunity for him to see my different state, see a different way of life.”

YoungBoy would go on to visit Garcia for Thanksgiving and Christmas. He even had plans to move to Utah to stay with Garcia before his rap career blew up in high school. So, when  the rapper was placed on house arrest in 2022, his lawyer requested he be allowed to move to the familiar sancturary of Utah where he stayed for two years until his arrest in April.

“I just want people to see Kentrell as a human, and there’s a whole other side to these things … he’s a human, and he has a good heart,” Garcia said.

Last week, NBA YoungBoy was officially sentenced to 23 months and prison and five years of probation after pleading guilty to gun charges in Louisiana and Utah. Last month, he received a suspended sentence and a $25,000 fine after pleading guilty to prescription drug fraud charges.

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