GoKawiilMay believed, like a lot of other redditors who had been snooping around, that the girlfriend in question was Rivas Hernandez. She pored over other screenshots of messages Safiyya had sent in the Discord chat over the years—including some that referenced Epstein and pedophilia—and began to view her with intense suspicion. Why was Safiyya asked to delete the livestream? Had she known that D4vd’s girlfriend was a minor? And how could she have ignored the chilling message in the chat about “the missing girl Celeste Rivas Hernandez?”
Two weeks after D4vd’s Discord erupted into chaos, Safiyya felt her life was spiraling out of control. Before, the server had been a constant companion and source of comfort: a near-endless stream of conversations that she could always drop in and out of when she needed a laugh or wanted to distract herself with memes. Plus, it had given her a purpose, a responsibility and direction outside of work. Now the Discord server was locked, and Safiyya’s direct messages were brimming with questions from suspicious outsiders who had joined the once insular online community. All of them, it seemed, felt called to search for answers in the absence of any updates, press conferences, or official statements about the case from the LAPD.
At first, Safiyya shrugged off some of the messages she received as harmless, if not creepy, trolling. When a stranger demanded she confess “everything you know about Celeste and David,” Safiyya responded glibly. “Idk david in person 😭😭” she wrote. “Lmfaooo.” She was telling the truth, she says: As much as she’d yearned to have a real friendship with D4vd, she barely knew him at all. For the most part, he ignored her when she messaged him on Discord or responded to his Instagram stories. He’d only ever tried to FaceTime her that one time, she says.
“Do not reveal any information with others,” the stranger responded, assuming an air of authority. “Bet,” she wrote back, attempting to call their bluff. The message exchange had taken place on September 13, five days before Rivas Hernandez had been publicly identified by the LAPD. But after the 14-year-old was confirmed as the deceased, it began to sink in for Safiyya that D4vd might not be as innocent as she’d once assumed. She’d long heard that he had a girlfriend named Celeste, and she’d even seen a user with the display name “Celeste” interact with him in the server. “Celeste in here??” D4vd, who had a crown emoji next to this display name and a badge signifying he was the owner of the server, posted in the chat in October 2022. “HI DAVID BARKKK,” this user wrote back, riffing on D4vd’s full name, David Burke.
According to their profile, “Celeste” had created a Discord account in January 2021 and belonged to two of the same servers as Safiyya: d4vd’s closet and one called E-Girl Paradise, which bills itself as a forum for socializing and dating (channels in that server include “freaky-chat,” “match-making” and “goon-corner”). Safiyya maintains that she didn’t know this user’s real age; after all, their profile displayed a badge—granted by moderators of servers—showing that they were over the age of 18. Another badge proclaimed: “Number 1 Fan.” (A spokesperson for Discord said these “server roles” are not determined or verified by the company. “We require all users to be at least 13 years old and believe that nowhere is our safety work more important than with teens,” the company said in a statement to WIRED).