More details have emerged in the murder case of Jordany Aracena, a 17-year-old boy who was fatally shot in NYC earlier this week.
A police source confirmed to the New York Daily News that Aracena was an aspiring drill rapper who may have been targeted over his name-dropping lyrics. The anonymous insider said detectives believe the attack was retaliatory, though it’s unclear if any of the assailants were mentioned in the teen’s music.
The shooting went down around 6:15 p.m. local time on Beekman Avenue in the Bronx’s Mott Haven. Surveillance footage reportedly shows five masked men sitting on an electrical box, seemingly waiting for Aracena’s arrival. Moments after the teen appears, a man opens fire and wounds Aracena in the chest. The assailants reportedly fled westbound toward Oak Terrace as Aracena was left on the ground.
The teen was reportedly transferred to Lincoln Hospital, where he was ultimately pronounced dead. The NYPD have yet to make any arrests in connection to the shooting.
“He was very new to drill and said the wrong thing in a song,” said Oswald Feliz, a city councilman who is also an Aracena family friend. “That may have made him a target. In my district, we’ve seen that pattern over and over.”
Lawmakers like NYC Mayor Eric Adams have been quite critical of drill music, claiming it glamorized and encouraged gang activity and gun violence within the Black community. Adams even called on social media companies to ban drill videos from their platforms, comparing the content to Donald Trump’s controversial tweets.
“We pulled Trump off Twitter because of what he was spewing,” Adams said earlier this year. “Yet we are allowing music, displaying of guns, violence, we’re allowing it to stay on these sites.”
Though detectives have reportedly linked the shooting to Aracena’s music, his family insists it was simply a robbery gone wrong.
“Yes, he was a rapper,” the teen’s cousin Odales Lenus told the Daily News. “But he was happy and had a lot of friends. … It wasn’t his music, it was a robbery.”
Authorities continue to investigate the case.
