‘My baby was innocent,’ says mom of teen killed in Fort Worth shooting that injured 5
The group of young men were on the south side of Fort Worth that day to shoot a music video, joyfully bouncing through empty supermarket aisles and parking lots, nodding their heads to the beat of the song. The rapper, in a style that’s synonymous with rap videos, stood surrounded by extras as he mouthed the lyrics into the camera. It had the feeling of good friends celebrating.
But the completed video, uploaded to YouTube a little over two weeks ago, begins on a sadder note — with a message reading, “RIP Dominick Primes.” Primes, a smiling extra in a black baseball cap and a white T-shirt, was fatally shot hours after they filmed on April 9, during an exchange of gunfire between two moving cars that left five other people with gunshot injuries, including two bystanders. That qualifies it, by many people’s definitions, as a mass shooting.
It’s not yet clear to Primes’ mother, Yolanda Pye, what the conflict was that led to the deadly incident, though she said Fort Worth police have indicated it could have to do with the video. Guns and cash are displayed throughout, as well as a disclaimer that states all illegal items are props.
All Pye knows is her son was wanting to have fun by appearing in the video, and found himself in the “wrong place, wrong time,” she said.
Primes, 19, was tagging along with his good friend — the rapper, Trap.Boiz — but didn’t know some of the people who wound up coming, according to Pye, who has spoken with her son’s friends. When the filming wrapped up, she said, people split into groups and left in cars, and Primes caught a ride with people he thought “can be trusted.” He was heading to a club in Dallas to meet a close friend.
Fort Worth police reported that around 10:10 p.m., in the 2000 block of Southwest Loop 820, people inside of two cars began firing at each other. A woman in a separate vehicle was struck by one of the bullets, police said. A man, sitting in his home on the freeway service road, was also shot.
Pye was awoken around 4 a.m. by a knock on her front door. Waiting on her doorstep were two police officers who first asked her if she was Dominick Prime’s mother, and then told her he had been shot.
“He said, ‘Well, we need to take you to JPS because Dominick has been shot,’” Pye recounted over the phone this week. “I knew right then in my soul that my baby had to be gone for the simple fact that I watch criminal shows all the time — and the only time that the police will come and knock on your door at any given time is when a person is deceased.”
When she got to the hospital, staff told her Primes was alive but she couldn’t see him because he had COVID, which she immediately doubted because her asthmatic son hadn’t had any symptoms. She was eventually allowed to see him, she said, when a nurse told her she would need to make a decision on pulling the cord. He was on life support.
He died at 7:28 a.m. on April 10 of the gunshot wound to his head, according to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office. Pye said she has lingering questions about parts of his treatment, including the fact that a doctor told her Primes got to the hospital at 11:37 p.m.
“What the hell took the ambulance or the police or anybody that long to even get to them?” Pye said. “I just don’t have an understanding to it. I never got an answer.”
MedStar, however, provided records on Friday that show the ambulance got to the hospital at 10:43 p.m., 20 minutes after arriving at the scene of the shooting. The ambulance arrived at the scene one minute after being dispatched, records show.
It was “seemingly not what the mom was told,” according to Matt Zavadsky, a MedStar spokesman.
Police didn’t respond by Thursday to several questions sent over email about the shooting, including a request for an update on the case and a comment on claims that Primes’ family made.
The department initially reported the incident appeared to be gang-related, with the gang division leading the investigation.
Pye and her former brother-in-law, Calvin Brown, whose son was cousins and best friends with Primes, told the Star-Telegram he wasn’t a gang member and was in fact far from that. A graduate of North Crowley High School, he was working full-time at Walmart as he weighed his next step in life, they said. He was planning on moving to Houston in the near future to live with Brown’s son.
Primes, Pye said, was “full of life,” with an outgoing personality and a goofy sense of humor that helped him cheer up those around him. He loved his three younger siblings, Pye said, and always was quick to help out his mother with cooking or cleaning.
She called him “fat daddy,” an affectionate nickname that had stuck since he was a chubby infant, even though he grew into a tall and slender man.
She and Brown above all else want for there to be justice in the case, and for people to remember Primes for the person and innocent victim that he was — not the tragic circumstances he found himself in.
Brown described how the label “gang shooting,” applied by police and then the media, led to people he doesn’t know making assumptions. He saw comments underneath one news article implying his nephew had it coming. A person, he said, wrote that he died how he lived.
“When you’re grouped in a category of something gang-related, you get a lot of negative connotations that come with that,” Brown said. “People have real horrible, mean things to say without even knowing the person.”
‘This shouldn’t have happened to him’
Dozens of people stood with flickering candles in the darkened parking lot of the OK Mart on Hulen Bend Boulevard, the spot where Primes and others danced in the aisles, and then in the parking lot. It was two nights after the shooting, but many people already wore red T-shirts emblazoned with a picture of Primes smiling.
The caption, in bold white letters, read, “#LongLiveDP. 2.12.2002 - 4.10.2021.”
Brown was among those huddled close together in the lot, across from the AMC Hulen theater, and he said many friends of his nephew approached him with stories to tell. They told him about how he tried to have fun in any situation, even becoming a “big clown” to make someone smile. They told him how he danced in TikTok videos.
He was also known for synchronizing his outfits, making his shoes work with his pants, and his pants with his shirt.
“Everybody was so shocked because they were like, ‘This shouldn’t have happened to him, because he wasn’t that type of person,’” Brown said. “Sometimes you put yourself in situations that you’re unaware of, and once it happens it’s too late.”
He heard from Primes’ friends the shooting may have started with “some type of altercation and beef with some other individuals,” he said.
He said he’s frustrated he and Pye haven’t been getting updates from the police department, noting he tried to reach out to multiple police officials and only got one call back, with limited information. He said an arrest would bring the family at least some closure, though he doesn’t have faith it will happen.
Pye, on the other hand, said she believes police will make an arrest.
“Because baby, I serve a mighty God,” she said.
She feels especially angry that the person who fired the fatal shot couldn’t have settled the conflict in a different way, or at least without innocent people present. It’s disappointing to her, too, that all those involved were so young, she said.
To see justice in the case, she said, would bring her some comfort as she mourns her first-born son.
She would be at every court date, in the front row, she said.
“It would bring me peace, for the simple fact — you did something that you didn’t have to do, and you knew what you was doing,” Pye said, addressing the shooter. “My baby was innocent. You took an innocent life, because you was mad at somebody else.”
This story was originally published April 30, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
