By Tamlyn Canahm
UPDATE: A 70-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the hit-and-run accident that left Nicki Minaj’s father dead. The man turned himself in to police. He is currently out on bail.
American rapper Nicki Minaj is mourning the death of her father, Robert Maraj.
The 64-year-old was killed in a hit-and-run collision in New York last week.
According to multiple reports, Maraj was walking along a road in Long Island when he was struck by a car.
The driver drove away.
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The elderly man was rushed to hospital in a critical condition on Friday evening. He died a day later.
Nicki, who was born Onika Tanya Maraj, has not commented publicly about the incident, but her team confirmed his death.
She had a complicated relationship with her father, whom she revealed in several interviews was addicted to drugs when she was growing up.
The 38-year-old also described how abusive he was towards her mother, Carol Maraj.
“I remember when my mother would let my father be violent with her and she always brings up this story about when I was a little girl and I would stand in front of my mother.
“That’s why maybe some people would describe me as abrasive or bitchy or whatever because I vowed from that age no man would ever abuse me, call me out my name, treat me like that,” she said in her 2018 documentary, ‘Queen’.
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While Nicki has been pictured with her father in the past, it is unclear where they stood in the months leading up to his passing.
The rapper gave birth to her first child with husband, Kenneth Petty, last year.
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