Cops have arrested the 16-year-old boy accused of gunning down his stepfather in a clash over smoking weed around the teen’s pregnant mother in their NYCHA apartment, police said Tuesday.
Detectives nabbed the teen in the Bronx Tuesday afternoon, nine days after he allegedly shot Jamel Davis inside their home at Brooklyn’s Walt Whitman Houses near Fort Greene Park on April 12 during an “ongoing dispute,” according to NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny.
The suspect’s name was not immediately released by this newspaper as detectives determine charges.
On the morning of the shooting, the boy’s mother, who was three months pregnant, was upset he was smoking weed in the house, Kenny said.
“She didn’t want the baby to be affected by the smoke,” Kenny told reporters during a briefing at Police Headquarters on Tuesday. “So mom first texts her son and tells him to stop smoking weed. That turns into a verbal dispute.”
A few minutes later, Davis, 48, gets involved, Kenny said. He and the teen start arguing and then get into a physical fight.
“(The teen) walks back to the bedroom, grabs a shoebox, (pulls a gun) and shoots (Davis) two times, once in the chest, once in the arm,” the chief said.
Cops long suspected the youth was responsible for the killing. After a prolonged search, cops tracked him down to E. 165th St., where he was taken into custody without incident.
“He had a backpack with all his belongings in it,” Kenny said. “And he looks very disheveled, like he’s been living out on the street since the incident.”
Cops were getting a search warrant to go through the backpack.
Police sources said the teen had two prior arrests. There were also two previous incidents when cops were called to the family home to stop arguments between the teen and his 38-year-old mom.
On the day of the shooting, the teen denied he was smoking and “was being so disrespectful, calling (his mother) some names,” said Davis’ brother, Geo Miller, who spoke to the boy’s mother after the shooting.
“That’s what got my brother out the bed, to say, ‘Hey, bro, why are you talking to your mother like that? If you wasn’t smoking that’s fine but you don’t need to talk to her like that,’” Miller said.
“Then one thing led to another,” Miller added. “It didn’t warrant (his death) … You don’t do that to a person that treated you with love and respect.”
The teen’s mom is three months pregnant with Davis’ child, according to the victim’s brother. The accused teen shooter is her only other child.
Davis had everything to live for at the time of his shock slaying. The baby on the way would have been his third child. And after years of struggling to make headway in the rap scene, his new song “Slidin” was starting to go viral and even soundtracked a recent Instagram reel from 50 Cent.
“He just never gave up. And when he turned 43 years old, he finally gets this opportunity,” Miller, 40, said of his brother’s recent success. “And then he gets killed by his stepson. How do you make it this far to get killed by someone you raised?”
Medics rushed Davis to New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, where he died.
Davis performed under the name Sinthoro Upper. He and the teen suspect’s mother had been together for about eight years.
After years of trying to make it big, his song “Slidin” suddenly gained some traction with listeners — something that surprised Davis more than anyone else.
“The funny thing is that he was just playing on the song,” his brother recalled. “He saw a movie and it was like some type of mob movie and he was reenacting certain things … He was having a good time in the studio, joking around. So that wasn’t a real record — it just happened.”
When 50 Cent soundtracked a March 16 Instagram reel with “Slidin,” it helped draw in scores of listeners. In a podcast interview posted just three weeks ago, Davis was thrilled by his newfound success. “I look on the phone and say, ‘What? 50?’” he told the hosts of “Talk Ya Talk.” “I said, ‘What?!?’”
It was a welcome reward for a man who spent years trying to make it in the music business, his brother said.
Davis leaves behind a 16-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son, in addition to the baby on the way, Miller said.