It was a clear April afternoon in Boston, the first after four continuous days of rain, and things were looking up for Onyx White. A music producer wanted to record with him in New York, and so he rented an SUV and, with his brother, headed toward the Mass Pike.
That’s when the blue lights of the Massachusetts State Police cruiser behind him lit up.
For some, a traffic stop might be a minor inconvenience. For White, it could mean being pulled back into a world he hoped to leave behind. He served 12 years in prison for murder. White was 16 when he fatally shot Geraldo Serrano, a 71-year-old clerk, during the robbery of a convenience store on Dudley Street.
Dudley. The name would haunt him for the coming decades, even outside of his native Boston.
Released in 2022 on parole, White was 31 years old at the time of the highway stop in April 2025. He had stayed occupied on the outside by pursuing a rap career, as well as theater and activism. Just days before the incident with state police, White even performed for Harvard students on his “Don’t Judge Me” tour. Following the show, he answered their questions about incarceration and what it’s like to reenter society after being released.
But on the shoulder of the freeway in exurban Mass, with Boston far behind him, the new life White was building was only a charge away from crumbling beneath him.
From delinquency to reentry
By his own account, White never got along well with authorities. He grew up in Dorchester with 10 siblings, surrounded by violence and without a father. As a youth, he spent most of his time with his grandmother, away from his mom.
“When I was a kid, I just saw things different,” he said. Among the memorable troubles, White recalled being kicked out of his local Boys & Girls Club multiple times: “I wasn’t really badly wanting to see people hurt, but you know, there was always some different lively thing happening.”
Despite those infractions, White said that he was ultimately readmitted, and subsequently avoided serious trouble. All these years later, some of his best childhood memories are from the Boys & Girls Club, and he still considers people he met there to be some of his closest friends.
Even with that peer and group support, White said he started selling drugs in the 2000s. He eventually got a gun and started robbing stores around his neighborhood—until the day he shot Serrano.
After a seven-year wait, White’s case went to trial in 2017. After a single juror voting to acquit him led to a hung jury, he figured the best option from that point would be to take a plea deal on manslaughter and robbery charges and serve time until he got paroled. He was just 23 at the time of his sentencing.
After his release in 2022, White just wanted to shine: “When I was incarcerated, I discovered a lot about myself, a lot of talents I didn’t even know I had.” Noting his musical aspirations, he added, “I just wanted the shot and the opportunity.”
One fellow musician White connected with after his prison stint was violinist Julia Glenn. “I was really struck by the level of his artistry,” she said in an interview. “Not only what he worked on when he was inside, or the grit and the strength it took to do that, given all he was facing and all he was dealing with, but also how quickly he managed to get things off the ground when he was released.”
White and Glenn started composing violin arrangements for his songs, but the project was put on pause shortly after it began. As the Massachusetts trooper followed him down Interstate 84, White realized his new music career, along with everything else he was working toward, was suddenly in jeopardy.
Highway patrol
White panicked, not knowing the road, and pulled onto the left-side breakdown lane.
“Get over to the right breakdown lane right now!” Trooper Yazmin Sobrinho shouted as she approached his window, police body cam footage shows.
A bad start. It was going to get worse.
After White made his way to the other side of the road, Sobrinho asked, “On what planet have you ever seen a motor vehicle stop conducted in the passing lane of a highway?”
White tried to answer, but the questions kept coming.
“Where are you guys headed?”
“New York,” White replied. His brother sat beside him, silent, trying not to get involved.
“OK, for what?”
“To handle business,” White answered, annoyed.
“What do you mean, handling business? How long are you guys going there? Got something to hide?”
Sobrinho then apparently lost her patience, took White’s license, and returned to her cruiser to access more information. During the process, White took out his phone and started to record the scene for social media.
He had recently been featured in a documentary, and understood the power of public opinion.
The 2024 GBH film “Don’t Judge Me” follows his journey from childhood to 18 months after his release, when the state removed his ankle monitor.
“I know that most people go back to jail and they go back to jail within a certain time,” White said on camera. “I’ve gotta move like I’m playing chess.”
Pulled over on the interstate, he decided that the best move was to broadcast the unfolding situation to as many people as possible.
As Sobrinho prepared to walk back to White’s car, a second cruiser arrived on the scene. “I want to get him out,” Sobrinho said to the other trooper. “He’s been an asshole, but I kind of want to take him on reckless [operation of a motor vehicle charges].”
Back at the SUV, Sobrinho asked White to exit, but he refused, saying she did not have his consent.
“I don’t need your consent,” she said. “You’re gonna step out of the vehicle.”
Sobrinho then unbuckled White’s seat belt, pulled him from the seat, and handcuffed him. Suspecting the worst, White called the troopers racist, accusing them of targeting him because he is Black. His brother recorded the interaction on White’s phone.
“Why am I going in a cop car? For what?” White asked, his voice rising. “Do I have a warrant?”
“Because. You’re under arrest.”
“Under arrest? For what? For speeding?”
“For the reckless operation …”
“Because I’m Black?”
Before long, White was handcuffed in the back of Sobrinho’s police car, arms behind his back and on the way to state police barracks. The trooper said they were going to charge him with the reckless operation of a motor vehicle, a serious crime, as well as with civil charges for speeding, tailing a vehicle, and obstructing emergency vehicles. White was back in a cell.
At that moment, he feared that he was not just returning to prison, but specifically to one of the state’s notorious maximum-security facilities.
An impossible commute
Accused of a new crime, White was suddenly poised to concurrently appear on four separate dockets: criminal charges in Dudley District Court (near where he was pulled over by the Connecticut border in Central Mass), plus two probation cases and a parole hearing. He would have to get to different courts scattered around the state, and missing a single date could send him back to prison.
White also had to travel regularly from Boston to Dudley every month—a trip that, in a car, can take more than an hour. Using public transportation, one would be lucky to get there in four hours. Due to the legal hardships, White was no longer able to drive, making his court appearances more difficult.
Driving rights in similar scenarios are a concern for many in the commonwealth. On Beacon Hill, lawmakers are currently considering a bill that would, according to the ACLU, “end the Massachusetts practice of taking away driver’s licenses for reasons that have nothing to do with unsafe driving, such as unpaid parking tickets and toll fees or failure to update a mailing address.”
There was no such measure in place to help White though. Sobrinho filed a report with the state’s Registry of Motor Vehicles two days after the stop, and his driver’s license was suspended. Overnight, White could no longer leave Massachusetts. His reputation, meanwhile, was in shambles.
“Now the perception of me was, Oh, this is just another Black guy saying he didn’t do it,” he said in an interview months later.
In Massachusetts, about one in every four people released from prison return to confinement within three years, according to the state’s Executive Office of Public Safety and Security. Refitted with another ankle monitor, White said he was afraid to go too far from his house, terrified of reincarceration and reliving the life he thought he had left behind.
He fell into a spiral. White had been attending Bunker Hill Community College to study theater, but with the monitor on his leg and mandatory appearances in court, he didn’t want to risk time outside home. Colleges that had paid him to speak and to work on productions stopped calling. His music career went cold. No one wanted to hire someone with fresh criminal charges attached to his name.
“It was a dead spot for everything that I’d been building on,” he said.
POV: Fighting back on social media
When the parole and probation hearings started in early May 2025, complicating matters further, White’s suffering begat raw indignation.
The court summoned Sobrinho to explain what happened the day she stopped him. But the trooper never showed up. It was a glaring double-standard; if White missed one court date, he’d be back in jail.
With his rap aspirations on pause and his case dragging on, White started gripping a different microphone, a smaller device but one comparably powerful—attached to his smartphone.
“Cops can say whatever they want to report and their word is taken without challenge,” he said in an Instagram reel last June. His headline: “RACIALLY PROFILED. ASSAULTED. FALSELY ARRESTED.”
Over a series of several months, White turned his social media accounts into lightning rods. He railed against police injustice, reposting his recording of the Dudley traffic stop in multiple installments, and published the body camera footage from the cops’ perspective.
The videos soon found a following. In addition to those who were eager to see how his case would turn out, many followers voiced their own criticisms of the system through his page.
“These tyrants have to be held accountable,” one comment said.
Others backed the cops: “She got him dead to rights. Nothing wrong. Great job,” one user posted in support of the arresting trooper.
In a clip White posted in June 2025, he talks about his reasons for “exposing” “misjustice” while standing in front of a gold-lettered sign for Dudley District Court. It’s an unfortunate twist of fate, appearing for a consequential hearing in a building bearing the name of the street on which he murdered Serrano 15 years prior.
Race and power
Months passed and summer faded. White clamored for something to be done. He went to Beacon Hill and spoke to lawmakers about his ordeal. He sent emails to Boston City Council officials and continued to post on social media.
Some of his videos got more than a million views. Other than some words of encouragement from followers and former allies, though, White said no one offered any real help. His case remained unresolved.
After six months of fighting a system he was sure was out to get him, on Oct. 14, 2025, White’s attorney filed a motion to dismiss the case, claiming Trooper Sobrinho submitted bad evidence. The judge set up a hearing to dismiss the reckless operation charge about a week later, stating that “materially false information was provided” to the court-magistrate.
Body cam footage showed White stopped on the breakdown lane—not on the travel lane, as Sobrinho had said.
White would now return to court in December, where all the criminal charges against him could be dropped. In the meantime, he filed a complaint against Sobrinho with the Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission, which in rare cases moves to decertify officers. Plus he reported the details to the state Attorney General’s Office.
White also continued posting leading up to his big day in court, which was rescheduled for Dec. 1. He called Sobrinho a liar and a racist in multiple videos. Big red letters in one clip spell “HATE CRIME” over footage of the stop. He said he was angry, and certain that he was the target of racial discrimination. White’s second chance at life had nearly been stolen from him by a lie. He wanted the world to know.
“I think it was race. I think it was prejudice. Power trip may be included in it.” In an interview for this article, he recalled and analyzed his interaction with the trooper.
“If a white man or a white woman or any other race was pulled over, would she have been asking what business trip are they going on?” White asked rhetorically. “Or how long are they gonna be on business? I can’t look at it like it was just a power trip—yeah, power trip maybe, but it was about race.”
The end of his criminal case wouldn’t mean it was over for White. Around this time, he started telling friends that he planned to seek criminal charges against Sobrinho.
A Massachusetts State Police spokesperson declined to comment on the allegations, writing in an email that “this matter involves pending litigation.”
Fight to the end
On Dec. 1, temperatures dipped below freezing, and the news forecast a snowstorm the following day. In Boston that morning, White got in a car with his brother, the same one who tried to drive with him to New York, as well as a friend, and rolled toward Dudley—he hoped, for the last time, at least under these circumstances.
After more than an hour on the road, White arrived at district court. A tiny building that one might confuse with a bus shelter from a distance, it’s on the side of a nearly empty road at the edge of town, one last unremarkable municipal building in Mass to pass before crossing the state line into Connecticut. The only other structures nearby are some wooden houses, a repair shop, and a Dunkin’.
Making his way toward the court on foot, White spotted a Mass State Police cruiser from the same Sturbridge barracks where Sobrinho works. He was five minutes late, but still took a few minutes to record a video for social media.
Sounding more hopeful than funny, White joked to his friends, “Maybe [Sobrinho] finally decided to come.”
In the courtroom, he strategized with his new attorney. Andrew Whitson was appointed to represent White after the defendant alleged that his first lawyer advised him to plead guilty despite the exonerating evidence.
“Your lawyer’s like your doctor,” White said. “If your doctor’s telling you [that] you need to take this medication, most people aren’t going to question the medication.”
While some innocent people may be willing to plead guilty on advice, Whitson said that White is different in that regard. He’s wearing a loose grey suit, carrying a stack of legal documents under one arm. It’s clear that White was not the only indigent person he was representing in Dudley that day.
“I do what my client wants me to do, and Onyx has a very clear goal in mind,” the public defender said outside the courtroom.
Huddled, they discussed potential outcomes. Whitson expected the criminal charge to be dismissed without argument from the prosecution. The civil charges—for speeding, tailing, and obstructing emergency vehicles—would still be a lingering issue though, the lawyer told him. Whitson contacted the prosecution, but was not able to get a deal.
White wasn’t fishing for an offer anyway. After everything that had transpired, he wanted to prove he did nothing wrong, and that he deserves the second chance the state Parole Board gave him. If he had to attend one more court date to achieve that, so be it.
The gallery was packed with people there for other cases. One woman sought to renew a restraining order. An onlooker recorded, despite a sign announcing that cameras are banned. At 9:20am, the guards looked exhausted. In the middle of the room, prosecutors shuffled through mountains of paperwork.
It was everyday bureaucracy on full display in a small Massachusetts border town, but for White, the stakes were massive.
In his turn, Whitson explained the motion to dismiss the criminal reckless operation charges, reminding the judge of Trooper Sobrinho’s false evidence. The judge asked the defender about the civil infractions, and seemed surprised to learn that those related charges would consume additional time on the court’s calendar.
The day’s proceedings took less than a half hour. At 9:29am, after fewer than two minutes on the stand, the judge dropped the criminal charges against White. It was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it procedure. Most people at the courthouse likely did. No strangers reacted, not even the assistant prosecutors.
His life had effectively been suspended for months over a false accusation.
“I was almost separated, again, from my family, from my friends, from my career, from things that I was building on because a public servant felt the need to, for whatever reason, lie on me,” he said.
And the truth shall …
Even with the criminal charges against him dismissed, White said that more damage has been done to his esteem than he can recount in words. While fighting the charges, he was put back into an ankle monitor and given a curfew. White was also prevented from leaving Massachusetts, keeping his dreams deflated.
“That drove me into a massive depression, because it’s like being back in that cell after doing 12-and-a-half years,” he said. “It’s like reliving a nightmare.”
The final court date arrived on Jan. 8. Without his license or anyone to drive him, White couldn’t make it to Dudley in person, but was able to attend the hearing through a video call. This time, though, Sobrinho showed up to testify in court.
Whitson asked the trooper why she questioned White about his destination during the April 2025 highway stop.
“When you pull someone over for speeding, are you investigating a speeding, or are you investigating something else?” Whitson asked.
“I’m trying to get a story from them,” Sobrinho answered. White audibly chuckled on his end of the call.
“Explain to me why a story is important to a speeding infraction?”
“Maybe they can explain to me why they have a reason for travelling that fast.”
“OK, and how long they’re going to be in New York. Is that relevant to why they’re travelling fast?”
Silence.
After hearing arguments from both sides, the civil court judge said that he would take the matter under advisement, and notify the parties about his decision. Whitson told him that another court already ruled on the criminal charges, but the judge said he would make his own considerations.
The consequent email came less than two weeks later, on Jan. 21. The civil charges were officially dropped. After nine long months in limbo, White got back to rebuilding his life.
