Teen arrested for shooting Brooklyn 18-year-old drill rapper to death on Mother’s Day 45%
By John Annese59% Rocco Parascandola54%
7/23/2026, 3:07:01 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 24 faulty reasoning types, including Representativeness Heuristic, Confirmation Bias, and Negativity Bias, with Appeal to Emotion as the most egregious example at 15.8% saturation with 140 hits. Analysis detected 1,096 faulty-reasoning hits from 884 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 47.6% and a BS Rank of 45% (11,807 of 21,198 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 55.70% of the article peer group.
A 17-year-old gangbanger who shot up a Sweet 16 party last year has now been arrested for the Mother’s Day murder of a teen drill rapper in Brooklyn, authorities said Thursday.
The suspect, whose name was not released because he is a minor, is accused of shooting 18-year-old Quah’mir Cruz on Blake Ave. near Mother Gaston Boulevard in Brownsville about 3:05 p.m. on May 10.
He was charged Wednesday with murder, assault, gun possession and reckless endangerment.
Sources describe the killing as part of a gang beef.
The teen suspect is one of 22 accused Folk Nation gang members indicted in a takedown last month.
He was on the loose until Wednesday, when cops found him in Brooklyn.
Prosecutors this week updated the indictment to charge the teen with Quah’mir’s murder.
He was ordered held without bail after an arraignment Thursday in Brooklyn Supreme Court on the murder charges.
Quah’mir, shot in the chest, called out his younger brother's nickname as the sibling raced from the family's apartment in NYCHA's Van Dyke Houses, just feet from the scene, and lifted the victim onto an ambulance stretcher.
“DaiDai, DaiDai,” Quah’mir gasped as Daiveon Cruz, 17, came to his aid.
Medics transported Quah’mir to Brookdale University Hospital but he could not be saved.
“To know that he’s gone and I can’t do nothing about it, it really hurts me,” Daiveon said at a vigil two days later.
“Honestly, I’m not OK.
It’s just crazy.
That was my best friend.
My first friend.”
The victim's mother was crushed.
“My heart is broken into pieces,” Danielle Cruz said at the vigil, attended by hundreds.
“I miss him so much.
I feel like a piece of me is gone.”
The shooter and his compatriots were members of the "Renegade Goons" and the "OOs," pronounced "Double-Ohs" — the latest generation of Folk Nation members to operate out of the Ebbets Field apartment complex in Crown Heights, Newkirk Avenue in Flatbush and the Flatbush Gardens apartments, according to Brooklyn D.A.
Eric Gonzalez's office.
They warred with several other gangs, including the 59 Brims, the 8-Trey Crips, Grape Street Crips and Insane Crip Gangsters, Canarsie WOO and Brownsville WOOO.
“The 22 alleged gang members indicted today are responsible for 26 shootings that left 23 people victimized, including one person killed," NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said after the June takedown.
The Sweet 16 shooting happened about 1:15 a.m.
Dec. 14, and left six teens wounded, including the niece of former Mayor Adams' gun violence prevention czar.
Two masked shooters — Quah’mir's accused killer and a second teen, also busted in the June takedown — opened fire on a crowd of partygoers that had just filed out of Burbuja Events in Cypress Hills as the celebration wrapped up, authorities allege.
Quah’mir, who rapped under the name Boe Quahh, was featured in music videos, including “Backdoor B’z,” “Top 4” and “OE Anthem,” which received more than 125,000 combined views on YouTube.
Drill rap is known for lyrics that often focus on gang rivalries and has been associated with numerous fatal shootings.
Quah’mir lived in the Van Dyke Houses, which was WOOO territory, law enforcement sources said, and the teen shooter had quarreled with one of the victim's fellow rappers, Envy Spark.
Spark and Quah’mir collaborated on several rap videos over the past year.
Spark and the alleged shooter fought in the lobby of the Brooklyn Supreme Court building on April 30, sources said.
The teen bragged about it in an Instagram post the day of the murder, writing, "Just broke envy sparks up in court I wonder if he still 00k," the last word a call back to his to his gang, according to the indictment.
On May 10, the alleged killer waited an hour for Quah’mir to come outside at the Van Dyke Houses, and when the rapper emerged with two friends, the teen shot him in the back, sources said.
Quah’mir’s family defended his character, saying he should not be defined by his sometimes violent lyrics.
“They got this concept of him being a drill rapper and being a negative person, but it’s not that,” said Quah’mir’s stepfather, Shaun Davis.
“Drill rapping is a way of rapping.
It’s not a lifestyle.
It’s not him.”
Quah’mir worked two jobs, including a gig in construction and another job at the Van Dyke Community Center, where he engaged with neighborhood kids through an anti-violence program.
“(The victim) would talk to us about his desire to not get ‘lost on the streets’ and he was working every day to make sure that didn’t happen,” Valerie Barton-Richardson, president and CEO of CAMBA, which operates the community center, said at the time.
“We at CAMBA are saddened beyond belief that our community, our city and our world will never get to see how brilliant his light would have shined in the decades to come.”
Barton-Richardson said that Quah’mir had recently earned his OSHA safety-training certificate and was working with CAMBA staff to update his résumé just a week before he was killed.
“His dream was to put me and his mom in a mansion,” the victim’s stepfather said at the vigil.
“He didn’t want people putting flowers and balloons in the air.
He didn’t want this.”
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