The father of Nicki Minaj died Saturday, hours after being struck by a vehicle on Long Island, New York. He was 64.
According to the Nassau County Police Department, Robert Maraj was walking on a road in Mineola at around 6:15 p.m. Friday when he was hit by a vehicle that left the scene.
Minaj, whose real name is Onika Maraj had not acknowledged her father’s death on social media as of Sunday evening. She has previously spoken about growing up around drug use and domestic violence.
“I would always hear him yelling and cursing, always,” the rap superstar said of her father, in a 2015 interview with The New York Times Magazine. Five years earlier, Minaj told Rolling Stone she was “disappointed” with her father. “I was afraid, very afraid, that something would happen to my mother,” she said.
The death of Minaj’s father came a little more than a year after her older brother Jelani Maraj was sentenced to 25 years in prison for sexually assaulting his 11-year-old stepdaughter repeatedly.
Minaj’s husband Kenneth Petty is a registered sex offender who served four years in prison after being convicted in 1995 of attempted sexual assault.