An 18-year-old drill rapper gunned down outside his Brooklyn home on Mother’s Day spent his final moments calling out for the younger brother who cradled him on the way to the ambulance.
Quah’mir Cruz, who performed under the name Boe Quahh, was shot in the chest on Blake Avenue near Mother Gaston Boulevard in Brownsville around 1 p.m. on Sunday, May 12, 2026, steps from the Van Dyke Houses where he lived with his family. Medics rushed him to Brookdale University Hospital, but doctors could not save him. No arrests have been made.
His 17-year-old brother, Daiveon Cruz, was cleaning his bedroom when word reached him that Quah’mir had been wounded. He sprinted to the scene and found his older brother bleeding on the sidewalk.
“When I found him, I had to carry him and put him on the stretcher,” Daiveon told the Daily News. “He kept saying my nickname. He was saying, ‘DaiDai, DaiDai.'”
A Mother’s Day Shattered
The killing transformed what should have been a day of celebration into a public mourning. By Tuesday, May 14, several hundred friends and relatives had gathered outside the Van Dyke Houses, releasing balloons and lighting candles in tribute to a teenager many had watched grow up in the complex.
His mother, Danielle Cruz, stood among the crowd, struggling to make sense of the loss. The vigil was steps from where her son was shot.
Daiveon, who described his brother as his “first friend,” said the grief has been disorienting. The teenager said he keeps replaying the moments on the sidewalk, the weight of his brother in his arms, the sound of his own nickname being whispered in his ear.
His stepfather, Shaun Davis, pushed back against any attempt to reduce Quah’mir to the genre he rapped in.
“They got this concept of him being a drill rapper and being a negative person, but it’s not that,” Davis said. “Drill rapping is a way of rapping. It’s not a lifestyle. It’s not him.”
Two Jobs and a Growing Audience
As Boe Quahh, Quah’mir appeared in music videos for “Backdoor B’z,” “Top 4” and “OE Anthem,” tracks that together drew more than 125,000 views on YouTube. But his ambitions stretched well beyond the studio.
He worked two jobs — one in construction and another at the Van Dyke Community Center, where he ran point on an anti-violence program aimed at neighborhood kids. He had recently earned an OSHA safety-training certificate and, just a week before he was killed, met with staff at CAMBA, the nonprofit that runs the center, to update his résumé.
The president and CEO of CAMBA said Quah’mir had been candid about the pressures bearing down on young men in Brownsville and was determined not to let them swallow him.
“Quah’mir 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,” the executive said.
A former after-school teacher at the community center said Quah’mir’s promise as a performer had been evident since he was a child.
Drill Rap and Recurring Tragedy
Quah’mir’s death adds another name to a list that has grown painfully familiar in New York City. Drill is a subgenre of hip-hop whose lyrics often address gang rivalries, and it has been linked to numerous fatal shootings over the past several years.
In March 2025, 16-year-old Queens drill rapper Sincere Jazmin was gunned down in a dispute with a rival teen. Law enforcement officials have long argued that the genre’s taunting lyrics can ignite real-world feuds, while artists and scholars counter that drill is a form of self-expression chronicling — not creating — the violence around its performers. The debate has reignited with each new killing.
Quah’mir’s family insists he belongs nowhere near that conversation. They describe a teenager who balanced his music with construction shifts, who mentored younger kids, who talked openly about wanting more for himself and the people he loved.
For Daiveon, those distinctions matter little now. The brother he carried to the ambulance is gone, and he is left with the sound of his own nickname in his ears.
NYPD investigators are continuing to search for the gunman. Anyone with information has been urged to contact Crime Stoppers.