*A long-grinding Brooklyn rapper was finally hearing his music on the radio when his life was cut short by the last person anyone would have expected — his own stepson.
Jamel Davis, 43, who recorded under the name Sinthoro Upper, was shot and killed inside a NYCHA Walt Whitman Houses apartment in Fort Greene on April 12. The suspect is his 16-year-old stepson, Tristan Hightower, who police say pulled a weapon from a shoebox stashed in his bedroom and fired on Davis as their confrontation turned violent, the New York Post reports.
The incident was sparked by a text message from the boy’s mother. Davis’s girlfriend, three months pregnant, messaged her son asking him to stop smoking weed in the apartment, citing concerns about her unborn baby’s health. What began as a digital dispute between mother and son escalated into a face-to-face confrontation once Davis stepped in.
When the argument intensified, Hightower retreated to his room, grabbed the gun, and opened fire. Davis was struck in the chest and arm before being rushed to New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, where he died.
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The tragedy hit Davis’s circle especially hard given its timing. His song “Slidin” had recently begun getting airplay on hip-hop stations and was featured in an Instagram reel by rapper 50 Cent. Friend Anthony Mabry struggled to process the loss. “It’s devastating for the community because we were all rooting for him, and he finally got his shot, and now he was taken away,” Mabry told the Daily News.
Mabry added that Davis had weathered years of doubt to get there. “He is 43, and people were doubting him, people saying, ‘Pass the mic.’ But he stayed with it. And he was finally getting that taste — and it’s like, ‘You took it from him.’ ”
“He was doing the music so long, and they just put his music on the radio,” Mabry continued. “He was grinding all of his life. God finally gave him his blessing within the month of this happening.”
Hightower was taken into custody in the Bronx days after the shooting. He has been charged with murder and criminal possession of a loaded firearm. Whether he will be prosecuted as an adult or juvenile has not yet been determined.
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