NYC drill rapper slay suspect admits Bronx killing: NYPD sources – New York Daily News

A teen gunman confessed to killing a 17-year-old Bronx drill rapper — but denied the victim’s disrespectful rhymes led him to pull the trigger, police sources said Wednesday.

The accused killer — himself a drill rapper who lives in NYCHA’s Mitchel Houses — was busted Wednesday and charged with murder in the Sept. 25 shooting of Jordany Aracena on Beekman Ave. near E. 141st St. in Mott Haven.

Police had believed Aracena, who lived just up the block, was likely gunned down over the insulting lyrics in his music directed at specific people, sources said. And a friend and neighbor told the Daily News after the murder that the teen had put on a tough front for his music.

But the suspect — whose name was not released because he’s a juvenile — told detectives he didn’t know the victim or anything about his drill rap lyrics, sources said.

Instead, the suspect’s story goes, the killing was over a petty turf dispute, said the sources.

On the day of the murder, Aracena crossed the street and approached the alleged killer and his friends.

“Get off my block!” Aracena told the group, the suspect told detectives.

That’s when the suspect claims he shot and killed Aracena, sources said.

It wasn’t immediately clear if detectives believe the accused shooter told the truth about his motive.

The murder weapon has not been recovered and the suspect has refused to say where it is, the sources said.

It was unclear whether any of the other men in the group, who wore ski masks, were mentioned in Aracena’s recordings, a source said.

If Aracena was killed over his lyrics, it wouldn’t surprise many familiar with drill rap culture.

“He was very new to drill and may have said the wrong thing in a song,” City Councilman Oswald Feliz, a childhood friend of the victim’s older brother, said shortly after the shooting. “That may have made him a target. In my district, we’ve seen that pattern over and over.”

The NYPD cited the drill rap culture earlier this year for inflaming gang tensions, with the rappers often taunting rivals in their lyrics and videos — leading to lethal results.

Mayor Adams even suggested some social media companies ban drill performers’ videos after the slayings of two aspiring rappers in Brooklyn.

In February, rising Brooklyn rapper TDott Woo was fatally shot outside his home in Canarsie — just hours after signing a recording contract. The rapper, whose real name was Tajay Dobson, 22, was shot in the head on Avenue L near E. 98th St.

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In May 2020, up-and-coming rapper Nick Blixky, 21, was shot and killed on Winthrop St. near Rogers Ave. in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. The Brooklyn-based rapper, who was born Nickalus Thompson, was set to drop his first mixtape in less than a month.

Aracena’s relatives told the Daily News they believed his killing was a robbery gone wrong.

The teen triggerman has a prior arrest, on July 7, for a robbery involving an accomplice. The case is sealed.

At his arraignment Wednesday night, the suspect was ordered held without bail.

Linda Ortiz, 32, a neighbor of the teen, said the suspect comes from a good family and seemed well-behaved.

“With everything that’s going on, I’m not surprised,” Ortiz said. “These children today, man. It’s the music they’re listening to — the way these kids are running around with these guns.”

With Harry Parker