Trenton's 31st homicide victim, Jafar Lewis, was a rising rapper, opening for acts at the Sun Bank Center and in Atlantic City.
TRENTON — Two months ago, Jafar Lewis was packing up his car for a trip to North Carolina.
Lewis’ girlfriend, Twanna Robinson, didn’t want him to go. The two had been all but inseparable since they began dating 3½ years ago, and Robinson was still a little sore the man she lived with was going on a trip without her.
In the midst of fawning statements by Lewis that Robinson thought were only attempts to butter her up, Lewis asked Robinson to get something out of the glove compartment for him.
“’I was like, ‘You get it,’” Robinson said, annoyed.
But when he asked again, she leaned into the car and unlatched the compartment door. Inside was a diamond ring.
Lewis’ and Robinson’s engagement started that June day, but there will never be a wedding. Their life together ended early Saturday morning when Lewis died after being shot on Middle Rose Street in the city.
Jafar Lewis, a 26-year-old Trenton resident fatally shot Friday night, performing as hip-hop artist Young Farr last year. “I’m lost,” Robinson said yesterday. “I just don’t understand.”
Lewis was fatally shot during a street confrontation in North Trenton Friday night, police said.
Lewis was in a car on Middle Rose Street near Brunswick Avenue around 9:20 p.m. His killer’s vehicle was alongside his when the shooting happened, according to police.
“Both had exited their vehicle when the incident occurred,” Lt. Steve Varn said.
Lewis was struck by gunfire from what police believe was one shooter. An ambulance rushed Lewis to Capital Health Regional Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 12:49 a.m., Varn said. No arrests had been made in the case as of last night, and no suspect description was available.
Lewis’ death is the city’s 31st homicide of 2013, tying the all-time record for a year of killings set in 2005. That year, the 31st and final slaying happened on Dec. 28.
Robinson sat at the dining room table with Lewis’ mother, Jacqueline, yesterday evening. They were in Jacqueline’s home in the West Ward, with family members gathered on couches and the front porch. Lewis was devoted to his large, loving family, and would never let a dispute get out of hand.
“He was a peacemaker,” Jacqueline Lewis said of her son.
“He was quiet, easygoing,” she said. “He didn’t bother nobody.”
Family members and friends said Lewis was a hip-hop artist on the rise, dedicated to his music. Performing as “Young Farr,” Lewis had opened for French Montana at the Sun Bank Center in Trenton and for Rick Ross in Atlantic City, Robinson said.
The love of hip-hop came at any early age, when he was growing up on Martin Luther King Boulevard.
“He was on the bus writing rhymes,” Lewis’ sister Kaheerah Marshall said.
An album, “ForeverFARR,” came out earlier this year.
“He was good, and one day he probably would have made it,” Robinson said.
They were looking to expand his career with shows in Philadelphia, New York City and Delaware. Robinson threw herself into promoting Young Farr and was getting paperwork to set up a corporation.
“I was his manager, stylist, every damn thing,” she said.
Just a few doors down from where Lewis grew up on Martin Luther King Boulevard, a memorial to him hung on a chain-link fence late yesterday afternoon. Candles burned below an airbrushed likeness of Lewis on the hanging cloth.
“Farr was a good kid,” said Lewis’ cousin, Pete Lewis.
Lewis’ rapping gave him some of the soul of a poet, something that didn’t always fit on the North Ward’s rough streets.
“You can be kind-hearted, whatever, but that’s not going to help you out here,” Pete Lewis said.
Unmarked police cars passed by periodically, checking out the young men and women who stood in front of a store across the street from the Lewis memorial. Some of the people became annoyed at the constant attention from the cops.
“We all have our certain ways, but it’s where we’re from,” Pete Lewis said, explaining how a person adapts to his or her environment.
“This is what we got,” he said, looking around. “It’s nothing. It’s nothing.”
Anyone with information on the Lewis killing should call police at (609) 989-4170, or the Confidential Tip Line at (609) 989-3663.
Contact Alex Zdan at azdan@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5705.
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