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Watch live from outside the courthouse in LA as a preliminary hearing takes place to determine whether singer D4vd should go to trial in the killing of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez. Her dismembered body was found in his Tesla in September. No cameras are permitted inside court. #d4vd #live #d4vdlive #livestream
UPDATE 1:30PM Pacific TUESDAY, JULY 21:
Prosecutors on Tuesday showed a body camera video with singer D4vd telling sheriff's deputies who were investigating a missing person's report that he had only met then-13-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez once in person, and he did not know she was a minor.
“She told me she was 18,” the singer said in the video from February 2024. “Everybody’s telling me she was 13.”
Prosecutors allege that D4vd, whose legal name is David Burke, who was 18 at the time, had already been having a sexual relationship with the girl for several months, and that 14 months later, he stabbed her to death after she threatened to expose the relationship and ruin his career.
The video was shown on the first day of a hearing in Los Angeles County court to determine whether there is enough evidence to put Burke, now 21, on trial on charges of murder, continuous sexual abuse of a child under the age of 14 and unlawful mutilation of human remains. He has pleaded not guilty and his lawyer has said he did not cause the girl's death.
Prosecutors also showed photos of the dismembered and decomposing body of Rivas Hernandez, which had been found on Sept. 8, 2025 by a homicide detective in the front trunk of a Tesla registered to Burke at a Hollywood tow yard.
Det. Joshua Byers of the Los Angeles Police Department testified that he found the head and torso in a body bag, and arms and legs in a garbage bag underneath it. He said two fingers were missing from a hand.
Rivas Hernandez's parents were in court along with dozens of reporters and members of the public who got their seats through a lottery drawing.
LA County Sheriff's Deputy Juan Gonzalez, whose body camera video was shown, testified that Burke had been extremely cooperative when he visited in 2024 to look into the missing person's report from the sheriff's department in Riverside County, where Rivas Hernandez lived.
Burke allowed Gonzalez to search the house, which was owned by Interscope Records for its artists to stay at, and Gonzalez and his partner found no signs that Rivas Hernandez or any girl had been there.
The mood was friendly and jovial among the three, and one of the deputies says “Ohhh, that’s pretty cool, good for you,” when Burke described his music career.
Burke said he had met Rivas Hernandez online on Instagram and Discord in 2020 or 2021, had seen her once in person a few months earlier and had last communicated with her a few days earlier. He shared Rivas Hernandez's phone number with them and showed them photos from his phone of a yearbook picture of her and a missing persons flyer from Instagram.
The preliminary hearing is expected to last about four days and resemble an abbreviated trial. There is no jury. Judge Charlaine Olmedo will decide whether the prosecution offered enough evidence to demonstrate probable cause to proceed to trial.
The defendant, who has been held without bail in a jail near the courthouse since his arrest, appeared in court in his jail clothes. The judge ruled that his hands could be uncuffed, but he must remain shackled to his chair. No cameras are allowed in the courtroom.