Confusion for Dallas detectives as D-boy is shot

FRONTLINE RAP artist D-boy Rodriguez was shot dead by an unknown assailant outside his apartment in Dallas on Saturday October 6. Motives for the killing remain a mystery although Dallas detectives working on the case said that it did not appear to be gang-related. Details of the incident are still emerging but first reports suggest Rodriguez was shot at 3.55am in his car after returning from a launch party for label-mate Tim Miner's new album.

After the shooting, Rodriguez apparently attempted to drive himself to get medical aid but his car hit a curb and became airborne, crashing through bushes to strike a streetlight, eventually landing right-side up back on the road. Although the singer suffered severe injuries in the wreck, Dallas police homicide detective Steve L'Huillier maintained that it was the bullet that claimed Rodriguez's life.

"He was still wearing a seat belt and the air-bag apparently worked properly," L'Huillier said. "It's very likely that he would have survived the accident alone. "Despite medical efforts, D-Boy died an hour after the shooting at Baylor Medical Centre in Dallas. D-Boy (Danny) Rodriguez was in the forefront of the Christian rap movement and his debut album on Frontline 'Plantin' A Seed' yielded the first rap song to chart nationally in America, "Pick Yourself Up."

His mother Cookie Rodriguez was one of the first converts of David Wilkerson's New York street ministry chronicled in the famous book "The Cross And The Switchblade." She has her own ministry to street kids in Dallas called The Street Church Academy, with which D-Boy was also involved. Since Christmas he had been hired by a Dallas youth worker, Gherig Soldana, to work part-time in gang intervention at three Dallas recreation centres. "He was just an exceptional young man who touched a lot of kids this summer...I don't think I'll ever see one like him again," Soldana told reporters.