Vallejo rapper charged with gold jewelry robbery in Oakland

OAKLAND — A Vallejo rapper has been arrested and charged with robbing someone he arranged to buy jewelry from, according to police.

Juwon Galbraith, 28, was charged with second-degree robbery and being a felon in possession of a firearm. He has been released from jail while the case is pending and a judge ordered him to stay away from the alleged victim while he’s out of custody, court records show.

Galbraith was identified by police from his Instagram account, which is associated with his stage name as a rapper, YWN Juski. The alleged victim identified Juski through his Instagram and later picked him out of a photo lineup, authorities said.

Police say that on Aug. 14 Galbraith arranged to buy jewelry from the man, but then robbed him of a Rolex watch and a gold necklace when they met up on East 25th Street in Oakland. He allegedly pulled a black handgun on the victim and said, “don’t try anything stupid,” then fled with a getaway driver afterward.

On Sept. 3, police raided Galbraith’s home on Cadloni Lane in Vallejo, and located him in a vehicle outside the residence. In the car was “a large amount of cash in different denominations along with a white pill bottle containing suspected Oxycodone,” police said in court filings.

Galbraith has a prior conviction of accessory after the fact stemming from a 2016 robbery case in Solano County. He was also one of more than a dozen people arrested in 2023 as part of a large-scale police investigation into the robbery of then-Alameda County Judge Kevin Murphy for a $12,000 Rolex watch, which occurred in an Oakland parking garage. Galbraith wasn’t a suspect in a robbery, but was picked up on suspicion of conspiracy to sell cocaine, on Aug. 22, 2023, when police raided six residences around Vallejo, court records show.