Troy Gill, the 13-year-old Brooklyn boy shot to death on his way home from a Nets game, left behind a critical clue to his unsolved murder — the word “Drench” tattooed on his body, a high-ranking police source said Wednesday.
Detectives believe Troy’s link to the violent Drench street gang, emblazoned on his body in ink, led to his death last Thursday.
“Whether he was in a gang or affiliated, he was targeted,” the police source said. “We don’t know if the other gang was looking specifically for him or [just for] anyone in that gang, but this wasn’t a stray bullet shooting.”
Cops believe Troy may have been shot in retaliation for an earlier clash involving a rival street gang. Investigators are focusing their attention on a white Jeep seen fleeing the scene and were tracking the movements of the mystery vehicle both before and after the shooting.
At a vigil for the intermediate school student on Tuesday evening, Troy’s family again denied he had any gang connections.
“We don’t know anything about any tattoo,” Troy’s stepfather told the Daily News at the vigil outside Troy’s home on St. Marks Ave., where more than 100 mourners stood in the rain to remember the fallen teen. “If he had one, he must have hid it.”
Troy’s mother, Mary Culbertson, was inconsolable during the vigil.
“This hurts me,” she said, weeping. “This was my baby! This was my first son!”
Troy FaceTimed his mother moments after he was shot near the corner of New York Ave. and Bergen St., asking for help, cops said. He told her he was running toward the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, but he collapsed about two blocks from where he was hit. He was shot repeatedly in the chest and arm, cops said.
A dog walker found him bleeding in the street, cops said. Medics rushed him to Kings County Hospital, but he couldn’t be saved.
When police arrived at the scene, Troy’s frantic family was nearby, desperately searching for the mortally wounded child.
Cops recovered about six shell casings from the scene. No arrests have been made.
Culbertson told cops she didn’t know her son went to the game until he FaceTimed her from the arena about 9 p.m. He FaceTimed her again about an hour later from an Uber, according to cops.
His last call was at 10:36 p.m., telling Culbertson he had been shot, cops said.
“He was a 13-year-old boy,” Culbertson told The News on Monday. “He was a baby and that should’ve never happened to him or anyone else’s baby. He did not deserve that.”
Cops are scouring video to see what happened as Troy left the Barclays Center. They’re also trying to figure out who he went to the game with and where he was planning to go afterward.
“This homicide is extremely troubling,” Assistant Chief Jerry O’Sullivan of the NYPD Detective Bureau said Tuesday. “It bothered me personally. I have a son the same age and we’re not going to rest until this case is solved.”
“This is unacceptable,” he added. “It’s tragic. It’s disgusting.”
The Drench gang operates in Bedford-Stuyvesant and northern Brooklyn and is part of the drill rap scene. Earlier reports on Troy’s slaying misidentified the crew as the Trench gang.
“Drench gang leaves bodies in the street,” one rapper’s lyrics note.
Internal strife among the gang in 2022 led to gangbanger Dinikue Grant gunning down fellow street crew member Daquan Trantham on a basketball court in St. Andrew’s Playground at Atlantic and Kingston Aves. in Bedford-Stuyvesant, cops said. Grant was later arrested and charged with murder.
