A 15-year-old boy has been charged with the murder of a 14-year-old drill rapper on a NYC subway after getting into a spat on the streets of Harlem.
Officers found Ethan Reyes, an upcoming rapper also known as ‘Notti Osama,’ with a stab wound to the abdomen around 3 p.m. on the northbound 1 line platform at the 137th Street–City College station on Saturday.
He was rushed to Mount Sinai St. Luke’s, where he was later pronounced dead. The teen suspect’s identity was not publicly revealed by police due to being a minor.
He was taken to New York Presbyerian Hospital after the stabbing, where he is being treated for stab wounds, according to the New York Post.
As of Sunday, no further updates on his condition have been released. DailyMail.com has contacted the NYPD for comment.
Ethan Reyes, also known under his rap name ‘Notti Osama,’ was only 14-years-old when he was stabbed to death on Saturday afternoon in Harlem
Reyes and the suspect, formally knew each other at the time of the stabbing, which took place on the 137th-City College subway station at 3 p.m. on Saturday
Police said the pair had engaged in a fight on the street before taking it down to the subway station (pictured)
Before the fatal stabbing, the two friends had been engaged in an ongoing dispute, according to the New York Post. It remains unclear as to what the spat was about.
Reyes initially pushed the other boy onto the tracks of the Harlem subway station, before being stabbed by the suspect.
He tried to run away but caved in on to the stairs of the MTA subway station, police said.
It remains unknown how the suspect managed to get back onto the subway platform from the rails.
A knife and a broomstick were later retrieved from the scene by cops, while footage of the bloody incident contains ‘clear images’ of what transpired.
The vicitm pushed the suspect onto the station’s subway tracks before being stabbed to death. He had attempted to run through the stairs before collapsing on them
The suspect was also able to be identified in large parts due to the surveillance footage, which has not been publicly shared.
Reyes was only identified by cops on Sunday – a day after the murder.
His family had only moved to Manhattan from Yonkers two months ago, according to neighbors who spoke to The Post.
Reyes, who also has a brother aspiring to be a rapper, would often loudly play music inside his family’s home, blasting tunes late at night and early in the morning, the Post reported.
Neighbors further told the outlet they called police on numerous occasions to file noise complaints against the teen.
‘We thank NYPD detectives, with whom we cooperated, for the rapid arrest of a suspect,’ Richard Davey, MTA NYC transit president, said in a statement released on Sunday.
‘That he and the victim are said to have known each other further underscores the senseless nature of this tragic incident,’ he added.
In February Mayor Eric Adams called on Twitter and Instagram to dump ‘drill’ – meaning to fight or retaliate – rap videos which he says promote gun violence.
‘We pulled Trump off Twitter, because of what he was spewing,’ he said Friday at a press conference. ‘Yet we’re allowing music, displaying of guns, violence. We’re allowing it to stay on these sites.’
He was alerted to the drill rap videos which he says glorify killing after his son, Jordan Coleman, who works for Jay-Z, told him about it.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, pictured Friday, said that Twitter and Instagram should banish violent videos by drill rappers which he blamed for promoting the kind of violence that killed 18-year-old Jayquan McKenley
Drill rapping tends to have heavily Autotuned vocals and themes of violence, killing and death.
Adams said he wanted to meet with high profile rappers and executives of the social media companies in a push to have the videos removed.
The mayor blamed the music and the videos for ‘causing the loss of lives of young people like them.’
‘You have a civic and corporate responsibility,’ he said. ‘We are alarmed by the use of social media to really over-proliferate this violence in our communities.
‘This is contributing to the violence that we are seeing all over the country. It one of the rivers we have to dam.’
Violent crime has become endemic on New York City’s transport system in 2022.
Rape and robberies are up over 50 percent compared against the same time this year, according to the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s statistics.
Meanwhile, felony assaults are up over 15 percent and grand larceny is up over 97 percent.
While crime is up, subway ridership is also up nearly 35 percent on this time last year.
In June, it was announced that the NYPD was installing 100 hidden cameras on subway cars across the city.
The cameras are not monitored and do not transmit in real time but will be used as a back-up to help investigators establish evidence.