A teenager was arrested Tuesday in the fatal shooting of an aspiring drill rapper as he stepped off an MTA bus in Queens, cops said.
The 16-year-old boy was charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon for the March 27 attack on Sincere Jazmin, 16, after he got off a Q83 bus near Liberty Ave. and 172nd St, in South Jamaica — in front of Detective Keith L. Williams Park, cops said.
Video of the incident recovered by cops showed the gunman was riding the same bus as Sincere — and shot the teen as they both stepped off the bus around 2:40 p.m. The gunman fired a bullet into the teen’s chest and took off eastbound on Liberty Ave., police said.
“My heart just hurts,” Miguel Jazmin, the victim’s father told the Daily News after the deadly encounter. “He was a very happy boy. He liked to joke around. He liked to listen to music. He loved his sisters.”
Sincere staggered about a half block to a neighborhood bodega, where he collapsed in the doorway. Medics rushed him to Jamaica Hospital but he could not be saved.
The gunman’s arraignment at Queens Criminal Court was pending Tuesday.
Jazmin was a drill rapper who went by the name Sdot Blokka, loved music and was on his way to a music studio at the time of the shooting, the victim’s family said.
“That’s my first nephew,” said his aunt, Vanessa Fortunato, 36. “I just want everybody to know he was very quiet, very laid back. Even down to his least breath he was very quiet. He didn’t even want to say he was shot.”
“He just wanted to do music and go to school,” she added, saying Sincere intended to go to a music studio near where he got off the bus.
A motive for the slaying is unknown, but detectives are looking at the possibility Sincere was killed over his drill raps, a controversial genre where performers mock rivals in “diss tracks” and often threaten violence in the lyrics.
“He was told that everyone was to meet up at a certain studio,” said Fortunato, who believes his death involved the drill rap scene. “I feel like that was a way to set him up. They knew he loved going to the studio.”
“He might of been doing drill music but he was a good boy,” the victim’s father said on Facebook. “He was a good boy.”
