HOUSTON – As a manhunt is underway for the people responsible for firing dozens of rounds and murdering up-and-coming rapper BTB Savage in Houston’s River Oaks area, his mother is calling for the suspects to do the right thing and turn themselves in.
Darrell Gentry, 27, known as rapper BTB Savage, was killed on March 30 in what Houston police called a targeted drive-by shooting near 2100 Mid Lane.
Montrel Burley, 40, was charged with murder, police announced Friday, but is still on the run. Another unknown suspect is also wanted.
“Good-hearted, amazing rapper, veteran, father, and a man who loved his family,” Gentry’s mother Bernita Ward told KPRC 2.
Gentry served in the military for four years with a deployment to Korea, Ward said, which is where he learned to rap and decided to pursue music.
“I’ll never forget when you call me and he’s like, ‘Mom, you want to hear my song?’ and I was like, ‘Your song? Boy, you can’t sing,’” Ward said. “That took me by surprise.”
Ward said her son moved to Houston earlier this year because it was closer to his manager and producer.
“He was definitely trying to make a career out of it,” she said. “That’s what led him to Houston.”
But, on March 30, more than 60 rounds in the middle of a River Oaks area street killed Gentry. Surveillance video captured him being followed in his white Mercedes by suspects in a black Subaru.
“To have him killed the way he was killed... like a senseless dog gunned down in the street, and then while his body laying in the street, then they’re robbing our place? No, that’s not acceptable to me,” Ward said.
Ward said surveillance cameras inside his apartment captured items like his clothing, chains, and money being stolen after he was shot.
Hours before the shooting, Ward said her son called her and told her he believed he was being set up.
“I said, ‘Leave right now.’ So, he went back and he took his two friends back to his place and he got in his car and he left,” Ward said. “While he was leaving, they killed him. His friends sent text messages to the people who were killing him.”
The text messages, she said, included descriptions of what he was wearing and driving.
About two hours before Houston police said he was shot and killed, he posted photos on Twitter standing in a bloody crime scene at his old apartment in San Antonio.
San Antonio Shooting
On Feb. 4, San Antonio police responded to Gentry’s apartment in the downtown area for multiple reports of shots fired.
Ward said a friend asked to do a song with her son, but a disagreement over signing a contract for $2,000 turned it into an armed robbery. Gentry’s fiancée and young child were home at the time.
Police determined one of the suspects held Gentry and his fiancée at gunpoint while demanding valuables, followed by a struggle for a firearm which caused Gentry to get shot accidentally by his fiancée and one of the suspects to be shot several times, according to a report the San Antonio Police Department provided to KPRC 2.
Ward said her son had to have surgery due to a bullet injury to his elbow.
When officers arrived, they followed a trail of blood through the apartment hallway before finding the robbery suspect face down in a pool of blood.
The case was closed after being deemed a justifiable homicide, a spokesperson for SAPD said.
VLADTV posted an interview with Gentry on March 26 on YouTube in which he discussed the incident.
“It’s our first time, like even shooting a gun or shooting somebody,” Gentry said in the interview.
He was asked if he was concerned about retaliation, to which he replied: “He got real family members too. So, they for sure might, they might do what they do. But I’m going to get active.”
Ward said since then, her son was taunted repeatedly by the robbery suspect’s family and others. She called the Houston shooting death of her son retaliation from the VLADTV interview.
“It ignited a fire to where they were saying, ‘Oh we’re going to kill you’,” Ward said. “My condolences go out to the (robbery suspect’s) family, because I understand the pain now. I understand the anger that they felt losing their loved one.”
Ward said she won’t rest until everyone involved is brought to justice.
“It’s sad that two families had to lose two amazing sons,” she said. “Both of our children made decisions that led to their demise ... nobody wins here.”