The 24-year-old Brooklyn man who was run down by a group of attackers and fatally stabbed Thursday was a father and aspiring rapper, the victim’s family told the Daily News Saturday.
Shaliek Smith, 24, was attacked by a group of six men and fatally stabbed in the chest around 3:40 p.m., police said. The pack had chased him for two blocks, starting outside a deli on Central Ave. near Schaefer St. in Bushwick. Cops said Smith ran for his life. But the attackers caught up to him at Eldert St. and stabbed him.
Smith staggered on for another block before rounding the corner and collapsing on Halsey St., where local residents came to his aid.
“He just turned 24 years old,” Smith’s grandmother Lorraine Solomon, 64 told the News on Saturday evening. “He was a loving father, an up-and-coming rapper. You know, he has a 2-year-old daughter. He was just trying to make it out here. However, life took a turn for the worse. I mean, he don’t bother nobody. He’s more or less to himself. He has his few friends. But, you know, I don’t know what happened, basically,”
Solomon said that she lost her son, Esteban Solomon, to violence in 2003, after which she raised Smith. She said police still haven’t found her son’s murderer but she’s hopeful cops find a suspect or suspects in Smith’s death.
“They need to be punished for what they did,” she said. “They need to be punished. You know, I lost my son, 2003. Here we go now with my grandson. They haven’t found my son’s killer. Now, his son’s gone. The fact of the matter is, is that we have no closure with that. And now, hopefully, there’s a lot of cameras around, we have closure.”
Medics rushed Smith to Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, where he died. No arrests have been made in the incident.
Family members described Smith as an aspiring rapper who was passionate about music and went by the name “Young Esco.” They said Smith was also the father of a 2-year-old daughter.
Russell Harris, 37, who was with Smith’s family and said Smith was “family…like, my nephew,” said the aspiring rapper drew inspiration from the world around him.
“Rap, hip-hop, you know,” Harris said. “So, basically, poetry, like, writing [under] pseudonyms. He started like that, and then he started going into more of an urban framework with it. But he basically wrote about what he seen and what he knew growing up and he transitioned that through music.”
Harris said he was “shocked” and in “disbelief” to learn of Smith’s killing since he didn’t know him to have issues with anyone.
“He loved music,” he said. “He loved his art, which is music. He loved his neighbors. He loved his neighborhood. He loved the people on his block, and he loved his grandparents.
“He loved his little cousin. He was just a ball of energy. He was smart. He looked at the world in a different way. He loved fashion and he never was a problem starter. He wasn’t a person to go and bother anybody. He was always a person to never be in trouble, because he was always with his grandfather.”
It still remained unclear what sparked the incident.
“It’s really unfortunate that the streets are so wild like this,” Solomon sadly reflected. “They need to do something about the crime, because it doesn’t make any sense. If it’s not a shooting, it’s a stabbing.”
