A married couple who were content creators are dead after rival takes YouTube beef to the Las Vegas Strip.
While most people spend hours upon hours of their day online, we still don’t know who may be behind the screen watching, lurking, or stalking. It could be an unhinged person whose online life fatally spreads to the real world.
That seems to be the case with 41-year-old YouTuber Sin City Manny, aka Manuel Ruiz, who allegedly stalked and fatally shot Rodney Finley, 44, and Tanisha Finley, 43, (who are better known on YouTube as Finny Da Legend and Bubbly, respectively) outside the Bellagio hotel on June 8, according to reports. And it was all recorded during Finny’s livestream.
The Finleys were visiting Las Vegas from Arizona and had engaged in a years-long conflict with Ruiz online. The feud reportedly started in 2023 when Ruiz pepper-sprayed Bubbly, but it’s not known what precipitated or warranted that incident. According to Finny’s friend who spoke to the NY Post, Finny decided to “handle this another way,” because Finny “controls his emotions very well.” His counterattack was to criticize and disparage Ruiz in nearly every video he livestreamed or uploaded. As a result, Ruiz routinely “hit” Finny with a copyright strike. Infringing on someone’s copyright can lead to YouTube taking down a content creator’s channel. As the squabble escalated, Ruiz lost subscribers as Finny gained popularity. It’s worth noting that both Finny’s and Ruiz’s channels had a modest number of followers, less than 60,000, by YouTube standards.
Finny, unwittingly, livestreamed his and his wife’s killings. Video online shows a man approaching Finny and Bubbly, as he is livestreaming, outside the Bellagio Sunday night and shooting repeatedly. The man, without saying a word, shot Finny first and, then, turned the gun on Bubbly. The murders, along with the assailant’s getaway and attempt to disguise himself, were caught on casino surveillance video, according to an arrest report viewed by KSNV.
On Monday, June 9, Ruiz turned himself into Las Vegas Metropolitan Police. The next morning, he was charged in court with two counts of open murder with a deadly weapon.
According to an arrest report seen by News 3, Ruiz claimed self-defense, telling the cops he thought Finny had a gun because Ruiz, supposedly, saw Finny reach towards his waistband and say, “What up, cuz?” He also told police that he shot Bubbly because he saw a “shiny black object in her hand,” thinking that was also a gun. However, no guns were found near the Finleys’ bodies, nor were any seen in the videos posted online, say the police.
In addition, Ruiz said during a previous stream, “I went through every casino there is. I heard there is one of my biggest fans here,” reports News 3. This could point to Ruiz’s premeditation of the dual killing.
YouTuber [Deleted], a fave here at UPTOWN, breaks down the case and its nuances in the video below.
