Area investigators are still searching for clues in the wake of violence during the filming of two music videos. The mysterious shootings left one musician dead and another seriously injured.
Friends and family gathered in northwest Harris County for a candlelight vigil late last month to mark the tragic death of 22-year-old Tyrell Young.
Less than 24 hours earlier near the the intersection of I-45 and Beltway 8, the aspiring rapper attended a house party being used as the backdrop for a hip hop video. According to KHOU Ch. 11, a group of young men not invited to the event began to cause trouble in the street in front of the home.
"It was a video shoot, so everybody was cool, calm and collected," recalled friend and witness Saundra Thomas. But before long, Young made his way outside where he was jumped by the uninvited guests. The scuffle continued into the backyard, where the rapper was shot around 1:15 a.m.
"He just wanted to make it. He just wanted to come up like everybody else. That's all he wanted."
Young's friends rushed him by car to Willowbrook Methodist Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. That same night, he found out he was going to be a father for the first time.
"He just wanted to make it," Thomas said the victim's dreams of success in the music industry. "He just wanted to come up like everybody else. That's all he wanted."
A spokesperson with the Harris County Sheriff's Office, which is heading up the investigation, tells CultureMap that potential suspects have yet to be identified weeks after the shooting.
That shooting came only one week after Louisiana rapper Reginald D. Smith was shot in the neck while filming a video just blocks from Texas Southern University in the Third Ward. The two suspects fled the scene in a dark four-door sedan and remain at large. The musician survived his injuries, and an investigation is still underway, according to the Houston Police Department.
Anyone with information regarding either shooting is asked to contact Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS. Watch the full KHOU report below for more on Tyrell Young.
Rapper Reginald Smith was shot in the neck at a music video set a week earlier. The Louisiana musician survived his injuries.
