Rochester, N.Y.-- While she didn't have the strength to say much else, the mother of 21-year-old Deavoghn Hernandez-Ruffin was able to confirm that it was her son who was shot and killed outside of The Bug Jar on Sunday night.
She tells 13WHAM News that her son was a spectator at an R&B and Hip Hop event at the popular Monroe Avenue bar.
On Monday night, the bar was closed despite having bands booked to play.
Jarod McClary was one of the MCs for the concert Sunday night. He says there was supposed to be another R&B and Hip Hop concert at The Bug Jar this coming Friday. That event has since been relocated to another venue.
McClary says the concert was going well on Sunday evening, but a fight broke out about two hours into the show.
"Everyone was having a good time," McClary recalls. "Then with just a snap of the finger, a blink of an eye, everything went south. Once the commotion started, it really picked up and security started coming around."
McClary says the fight was taken outside of the bar and that's when he decided to leave. He heard through the grapevine that someone got shot and later died.
McClary is a local rap artist himself. He goes by the stage name "The 1". He says it's hard enough for local hip hop acts to book venues because of the stigma associated to rap. Even The Bug Jar doesn't typically host hip hop concerts. He's afraid Sunday's shooting makes things much worse.
"For something like this to happen at The Bug Jar-- a place that doesn't even do hip hop kind of shows, I feel it closed another door for already hard market. A market in Rochester."
McClary says he's sick of the violence he's seen in the city, especially the last few weeks. He wrote a song called "Black on Black" about Rochester's young men dying due to violence.
For McClary, music is uplifting, and he hopes that venues will take a chance and help showcase local hip hop talent. However, he has pleads with his peers in the city, "It's not hard to just come out and have fun. That's not a hard thing to do. If you have beef, settle it like men. Just talk it out."
