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Lil Wayne Mourns Police Officer Who Saved His Life
Lil Wayne is mourning the New Orleans police officer who saved his life when he was 12 years old.
Robert Hoobler was found dead in his home on Friday, according to Nola.com. The 65-year-old had suffered from health issues after a car crash and struggled with diabetes, which led doctors to amputate both his legs.
Wayne has often credited Hoobler for saving his life. On Nov. 11, 1994, a young Dwayne Carter shot himself in the chest while handling a 9 mm pistol in his mother’s Hollygrove apartment. Although he was off duty, Hoobler heard the police radio report and drove to the scene, along with five other officers. The other cops left Wayne to die on the floor as they searched the residence, but Bob rushed him to the hospital.
On Sunday, Wayne shared a touching tribute to the man he called “Uncle Bob,” posting a photo of the late officer outside his old house. “Everything happens for a reason. I was dying when I met u at this very spot. U refused to let me die,” he wrote. “Everything that doesn’t happen, doesn’t happen for a reason. That reason being you and faith. RIP uncle Bob. Aunt Kathie been waiting for u. I’ll love & miss u both and live for us all.”
During a 2020 episode of his Young Money Radio on Apple Music, Wayne recalled Bob’s heroic act after he attempted suicide. “First of all, my life was saved when I was young,” Wayne said. “I was 12 or something, I think, shot myself. I was saved by a white cop, Uncle Bob. You have to understand the way I view police, period. I was saved by a white cop.”
Added Wayne, “Those Black cops jumped over me, and ran through the crib, and said we found the gun, we found this, we found that. He said I found this baby on the floor, I need to get to a hospital. He didn’t wait for an ambulance, he took his car. He made somebody drive it, and he made sure that I lived. That’s Uncle Bob, and Uncle Bob’s story.”
Wayne rapped about the incident on his 2015 track “London Roads.” At the time, he thought Bob had died, but he was alive and they reconnected. He even offered him financial support.
“He was like, ‘I don’t want nothing. I just want to say, ‘I’m happy to say that I saved a life that mattered,” Wayne told Emmanuel Acho in 2021.