Suspected gunman arrested after stray bullet kills sports Youtuber
National Gun Violence Memorial / Unsplash: herrzettNYPD has arrested a man suspected of accidentally killing sports YouTuber Jeremy Cummings during a drive-by shooting.
The shooting took place in Harlem on July 2, 2024, when the accused opened fire on a group and struck the 37-year-old in the back and abdomen.
Cummings later died at the hospital, with police sharing they didn’t believe him to be the intended target. Now, the New York Police Department has arrested someone for the crime as of August 13.
21-year-old Mohamed Sawaneh was taken into custody and later escorted out of the 28th Precinct hours later, proclaiming his innocence to amNewYork as he was led to an unmarked police vehicle.
Prior to his death, Cummings had spent three years building a following on YouTube under the channel ‘JermSportsTV‘, where he frequently posts shorts of sporting clips and garnered over 35,000 subscribers.
However, Cummings was killed at Eighth Avenue and West 118th Street in the afternoon after the shooter opened fire while driving by in a White Honda Accord.
Sawaneh is being charged with one count of second-degree murder, first-degree robbery, leaving the scene of an incident without reporting it, and two counts of criminal possession of a firearm.
NYPD are claiming he fled the scene after the Honda Accord crashed into a van. A mobile phone was left in the abandoned vehicle, which revealed selfies taken with a gun and photos of the group Cummings was with when the shooting took place.
Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Dasha Kabakova also shared that past Google searches on the phone included “how to put bullets” into a gun.
After crashing the Honda Accord, Sawaneh is then accused of stealing a CitiBike from a 13-year-old by threatening the teenager at gunpoint, before making his escape by pedaling away and hiding in Ohio. Nonetheless, Sawaneh is insisting he “didn’t do sh**”.
Sawaneh has no prior criminal history and police are yet to share a possible motive for the shooting, claiming that aspect of the crime remains under investigation. The accused will return to court on August 16.