STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A Wu-Tang Clan cohort who once worked with hip hop's biggest names drove the car in a New Brighton hit-and run crash

, according to police sources.

Shyheim Franklin, 36, who has rapped under the names Manchild, Little Shyheim and The Rugged Child, surrendered himself to police on Wednesday in connection with the 5:07 a.m. crash, which killed Felipe Avila of Tompkinsville, police sources said.

He's expected to face a charge of leaving the scene of a fatal accident, which is a class D felony, those sources said.

That morning, Avila was headed to work at the Rosamaria Bakery on Vreeland Avenue in Port Richmond, driving a black 1996 Toyota Celica on Lafayette Avenue, Richmond Terrace-bound.

Franklin, meanwhile, was driving east on Cassidy Place in a 2003 Volvo S80 belonging to a close friend, police sources said. Police sources also allege Franklin blew through a stop sign and slammed into Avila's car, then hit a parked Dodge Ram before getting out of the Volvo and running off.

Sources said Franklin left blood in the Volvo and on the driver's side airbag.

Franklin was out on $10,000 bail at the time of the crash, after his April arrest on gun and drug possession charges.

Franklin put out his first album at 15 years old. He's worked with RZA and Tupac Shakur and shared the stage at Madison Square Garden with The Notorious B.I.G., and he has a film and television resume.

He also has a lengthy criminal history that includes serving 16 months of a two-year prison sentence for a 2002 second-degree attempted robbery conviction.

Stories in the Advance archive and public records also detail his criminal history and his past brushes with violence. He was the victim of a slashing in 1997, and in 1998, he received probation after he was found with a gun stolen from the LAPD six years prior.

In 1999, a 15-year-old boy was shot to death at a Stapleton nightclub during a release party for one of Franklin's CDs.

His arrest in April stemmed from a police search of his 185 St. Mark's Place apartment in St. George -- members of the Staten Island Gang Squad found a loaded .32 caliber Serrifile Inc. Terrier One revolver under his mattress, 41 glassines of heroin in a safe under his bed, a Xanax pill in a plastic zipper bag on his bedside table, and a scale alongside empty bags and glassines under his bed, court papers allege.

That case is still pending.

He professed his innocence in an April interview with the online publication HipHopDX: "Of course you know the NYPD have a history of not flying straight, you know what I'm saying?... There's a lot of illegal stuff that went down in the procedures that wasn't supposed to take place but my attorneys is on it and you know we gonna fight."

"I'm an artist but this happens to people everyday," he told HipHopDX. "Like I said, they don't always play fair.... I'm innocent. And that's that."