Text messages show teen whom singer D4vd is accused of killing had an abortion

A Relationship Hidden in Plain Text

The phone evidence presented on Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court laid bare a months-long sexual relationship between David Anthony Burke, who performs as D4vd, and Celeste Rivas Hernandez, who was 13 at the relationship's start and 14 by the time her remains were found. LAPD Detective Corey Farrell testified that messages between the pair spanned August 2022, when Celeste was 11, through April 23, 2025. The volume of explicit imagery, court records show, was substantial enough that investigators described the phone as containing a "large volume of explicit images" of the two. Text exchanges reviewed in court tracked past and future liaisons, meeting points, and sexual positions, painting a picture of a routine the prosecution argues was not a fleeting contact but a sustained pattern of conduct.

Abortion and Emergency Contraception in the Record

A significant share of Friday's testimony focused on reproductive matters. Farrell told the court that texts "many times" discussed abortion and emergency contraception, with messages dating from November 2023 through the following year. In a November 2023 exchange, a 13-year-old Celeste wrote that she was waiting for her period and that if she were pregnant, "im not having it though." Later messages included a Dec. 20 reference to taking Plan B and a Jan. 8, 2024 exchange in which D4vd apologized and wrote, "im sorry again baby I didn't want to ever put you through this," to which she replied that neither of them was able to care for a baby. A June 2024 text from Celeste asked, "What if the first abortion didn't work," and a D4vd text the following day suggested they make any subsequent abortion "the last abortion until we have kids." Prosecutors also showed a photograph from June 2024 of the pair holding a package of Plan B. Under California law, evidence of a minor's reproductive history can be admitted in sexual-abuse prosecutions when it bears on the nature of the relationship, and the prosecution clearly intends to use these messages to demonstrate the duration and character of the contact.

The Medical Examiner and the Manner of Death

Earlier in Friday's hearing, Los Angeles Medical Examiner Dr. Grant Ho testified that Celeste's cause of death was multiple penetrating injuries and that the manner of death was homicide. Ho said the advanced state of decomposition prevented him from pinpointing a date but indicated she had "likely been deceased for at least weeks" and could have died as early as April 25, 2025 — two days after she was picked up from her hometown of Lake Elsinore, 80 miles outside Los Angeles, in a car D4vd allegedly sent. The examiner described postmortem dismemberment consistent with a power tool, possibly a chainsaw, including severed arms and legs and amputated fingers from her left hand. He identified two significant penetrating injuries — one to the abdomen passing through the diaphragm and damaging the liver, and another to the left chest damaging ribs — either of which he said could have been fatal and both of which were most likely sustained before death. The case now moves to Judge Charlaine Olmedo, who will determine whether probable cause exists to send it to trial. There is no jury.