He was a rapper trying to stop violence in Baltimore. Tyriece Travon Watson, better known as Lor Scoota, had just finished hosting a charity basketball game. The fliers advertising the event had said, “Pray for peace in these streets.” Music artists and important faces from around the city had come together to prove they could get along. 

Lor Scoota got in his car and left the arena. Bringing peace to Baltimore was a message he had been trying to spread — on panels, in classrooms and in his music.

“How I’m supposed to live with all this death in my sight?” the 23-year-old had once sang.

Lor Scoota was about a mile away from the arena when he was shot and killed.

Baltimore police said the rapper was driving east at 6:56 p.m. Saturday when an unknown black male wearing a white bandanna stepped into the street and opened fire into Lor Scoota’s car. He was transported to an area hospital, but was pronounced dead shortly after. Homicide detectives are investigating the shooting as a targeted attack.

“We have to be tired of this. Can #Scoota be a wake up call for us?” tweeted police spokesman T.J. Smith. “He entertained many, now gone, just like that. We are better than this.”

That was the call Lor Scoota had just sent out at the Morgan State University field house.

“Supposedly people think all the rappers don’t like each other, so we brought everyone together,” said Tadoe, another artist who played in the game. “It was about having fun, showing that there was a smile on everybody’s face.”

Lor Scoota was one of the city’s most beloved hometown rappers. His 2014 song “Bird Flu” inspired dozens of YouTube videos of Baltimoreans doing the “Bird Flu dance.” When the Baltimore Orioles made it to the playoffs, Lor Scoota changed the song’s lyrics for the radio: “Talkin’ ’bout that orange and black / I got a bird on my hat / Won the Series in ’83, I think it’s time to go back.”

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Source: Washington Post | Jessica Contrera