Cousin Charged With Killing NYC Woman Found in Storage Container
The cousin of a single mother found unresponsive inside of a storage container in the Bronx, New York, has been charged with her horrific murder.
The body of 35-year-old Nisaa Walcott was found Friday across from a self-storage facility where people are known to dump “unwanted items,” CBS2 reported.
On Saturday, 21-year-old Khalid Barrow, and Walcott’s cousin, was arrested and charged with murder and concealment of a human corpse. Upon locating Barrow, police found “financial documents” that belonged to Walcott. Her brother, Eugene Butler, had filed a missing person’s report.
Authorities are investigating if Walcott, a beautician, was murdered on February 16, the last day she was seen.
”We’re letting the police do their work. We’re still uncertain what happened,” Walcott’s sister-in-law Anginette Johnson said. ”We’re just in shock right now.”
Johnson says her husband, Eugene, “realized Wednesday night…something was wrong. She wasn’t answering her phone at all,” she recalled.
Eugene said he last spoke to his sister on Valentine’s Day, ABC 7 NY reported. But after they spoke, he started to receive strange text messages from her number. He knew it wasn’t his sister because she always picked up the phone.
The next day Eugene filed a missing person’s report. That same day that Walcott’s son received a text message saying his mother was going out of town for business and that she was leaving Khalid Barrow in charge.
But Johnson said Walcott would have never left her son. When the teen arrived home, he saw Barrow cleaning their home and the apartment smelled like bleach.
A video from February 18 allegedly shows Barrow dragging a plastic bin to the roof of the building. Seven days later, he returned with another man who helped him carry the container out of the building. Surveillance footage shows a man dumping the bin in the Bronx where Walcott’s body was found.
While the family knows that Walcott is a homicide victim, they still haven’t been told the cause of her death.
”The people who killed her are just cruel to put her in a container like that,” Anginette johnson told “the New yOrk Daily News.”
50 Cent Wins Bid on Bottle Of Wine That ‘Cost More’ Than A Rolls-Royce
50 Cent‘s latest acquisition “cost more” than a “Rolls Royce” thought it’s something you can enjoy in the club.
According toClick2Houston, on Sunday the I Get Money rapper was in Houston attending the annual Uncorked! International Wine Competition at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. The competition draws wealthy patrons looking to purchase expensive wines from 17 different countries, including France, Spain, Italy, Israel, Peru, Argentina, and South Africa.
50 Cent went to his Twitter account to announce that he had bought a bottle of wine that’s more than most people make in a year.
so i finally won a bid at the win auction, your a nobody till you win a bid at the wine auction. now i have bottle of wine that cost more then Rolls Royce. 😕i just got excited. #bransoncognac#lecheminduroipic.twitter.com/uNktRAzd00
50 Cent, who was dressed in cowboy gear, owns and operates Sire Spirits. The purchase was made under the spirits company as it bought the Top Texas Wine, Hye Meadow Winery Boooom Red, Texas High Plains, 2017, for a reported $125,000.
This isn’t 50 Cent’s first time at the annual event. Last year, he put in an unsuccessful bid on a bottle that sold for $175,000 at the same event. The Power executive producer did win the Grand Champion title at the International Wine Competition for his Le Chemin du Roi champagne last year.
It’s been a busy stretch for the former Curtis Jackson. In February, he performed at the Super Bowl’s halftime show. In January, he and reality TV queen Mona Scott-Young announced they will attempt to find the killers of noted rappers, according to Deadline.
The unscripted series, Hip Hop Homicides, will be produced by 50 Cent’s G-Unit Film & Television, along with Scott-Young’s Monami Productions and Lionsgate Television.
Former TMZ co-host Van Lathan is slated to host the series.
D-Nice Club Quarantine Live in Vegas, Keyshia Cole and More to Perform
On the heels of hosting Club Quarantine Live on Instagram from The White House last night, D-Nice reveals the details for Club Quarantine Live in Vegas Weekend in Las Vegas, Nev. on Sept. 2-4 presented by Brand Nice and Live Nation Urban.
D-Nice has personally curated a dynamic and diverse lineup for what promises to be an unforgettable three-day experience in the party capital of the world.
The jam-packed weekend will feature multiple performances by D-Nice, along with performances by Keyshia Cole, Fabolous, Jagged Edge, Tank, El Debarge, Amerie, Mya, Fred Hammond and more, according to a press release.
The weekend will also feature events both day and night including the headline event of the weekend CQ Live, the Nine Zero welcome party, Girls Dem Sugar Pool Party, Praise and Worship Brunch, Originals Closing Party and for the nighthawks, a special CQ After Dark late-night bash.
As part of the weekend experience, D-Nice will also host The Meet Up; A series of panels on health and wellness and financial literacy as he continues to find impactful ways for his community to connect with each other and grow stronger.
D-Nice says, “I’m excited to be able to continue the momentum from the sold-out Club Quarantine Live shows last year. Together with the incredible team at Live Nation Urban, we are bringing an amazing and diversified line-up of programming to Las Vegas. There is something for everyone in the CQ Family to enjoy!”
“We couldn’t be more excited to continue to help D-Nice grow the Club Quarantine brand,” says Malcolm J. Gray, marketing and partnerships director of Live Nation Urban.
“Taking Club Quarantine Live to Vegas is a momentous step as D continues to nurture and grow his community while using music to bring people together. This is really going to be something special.”
Last year, D-Nice brought his mega-popular social media phenomenon Club Quarantine to life on stage with a sold-out show at the Hollywood Bowl which featured special guest appearances from The Isley Brothers, Common, Trey Songz, Deborah Cox, Sheila E and Mary Mary. The live shows continued with sold-out stops in New York and Atlanta. In addition to plugs from Rolling Stone, TimeOut and more, Billboard hailed Club Quarantine as “one of the most uplifting events to take root during COVID-19’s stay-at-home mandates.”
During quarantine, D-Nice launched his Club Quarantine virtual parties on Instagram which brought millions of people together during the stay-at-home mandates. The virtual community connected people from all over the world and provided a much-needed uplift during troubled times. Live Nation Urban has given him a platform to expand this experience worldwide.
Weekend passes will be available for pre-sale on Friday, Mar. 4 at 10 a.m. ET, while general on-sale begins Monday, Mar. 7 at 10 a.m. ET, tickets can be purchased at CQLiveinVegas.com. CQ die-hards can score their tickets early during pre-sale by signing up for an exclusive pre-sale access code.
White Indiana Education Chair Apologizes For Saying Black Students ‘Lack of Respect For Learning’ Is Behind Low Test Scores
An Indiana GOP lawmaker apologized for making a “hurtful” comment about the low test scores among African American students.
Chair of the House Education Committee Rep. Bob Behning, R-Indianapolis, apologized on the House floor on Monday for crediting the low test scores of Black students to their lack of “respect for learning,” 13 News reports.
“I want to begin by sending an apology for any hurtful comments I might have said, I did say, last week in the education committee,” Behning said.
The comments came last week when Behning was defending HB 1251, a bill that will make changes to the state’s academic standards for all students; he cited a statistic that says only 30 out of 1,000 Black students in the Indianapolis Public Schools system passed both the English and math portions of the ILEARN exam last year.
“I would suggest that part of the problem is, and there’s a number of things, poverty impacts that for sure, having respect for learning,” Behning said. “All of, there’s a lot of things that come into play.”
Behning’s comment received backlash from groups like the College Democrats of Indiana and the Indianapolis Urban League.
“We don’t believe the apology is sufficient because it’s not grounded in action,” Mark Russell, director of advocacy for the Indianapolis Urban League, said.
Behning, a long-time chair of the House education committee, claimed that his words were taken out of context and were about Indiana’s broader academic achievement issues and not specifically Black students.
“I should have been clearer in stating what I truly believe to be the biggest obstacles to improving our children’s academic performance,” he toldThe Indy Star. “I sincerely regret my remarks have been hurtful to others, and I apologize for it.”
Behning claimed he only used the statistic last week for its “shock factor” to illustrate Indiana’s academic problem and was not intending to imply that only Black children lack a “respect for learning.”
“I definitely would not want people to take from my statement that it’s focused at one specific group of people,” he said.
The XP Agency Thrives Through the Pandemic Utilizing Experiential Marketing to Change With the Times
The pandemic has forced people and companies to either realign how they do business or pivot away from what they are used to doing.
The XP Agency, co-founded and led by experienced entertainment executives Tamara Francois and Adolfo Vazquez, has stayed in business due to the knowledge gained over 20 years working in marketing. It’s an “Amplified Experiential” company that delivers real-life experiences supported by virtual/digital reinforcement.
Throughout the years, they’ve worked with many recognizable clients. Netflix, Sprite, Toyota, and Coca-Cola are just a few examples. They’ve just completed a campaign for Aflac that featured hip-hop legend Nas as a music supervisor.
BLACK ENTERPRISE spoke to The XP Agency founders to discuss how they’ve survived and continue to thrive during the coronavirus pandemic, the collaboration with Nas, and their experience doing experiential marketing.
How has your vast experience in this industry helped you form this agency, and what precisely do you do as the XP Agency?
Our marketing agency exists to help people understand how a product or service fits into their lives. We do this by creating opportunities that allow people to experience that product or service first-hand. Our 20 years of working as experiential marketers have taught us how to do this very well.
Experiential marketing is an industry that has evolved over time. It started as guerilla-style street marketing stunts, and it exists today as highly strategic, complex marketing campaigns. We have been a part of every iteration of the industry over the past two decades. This has fostered an acumen and deep understanding of creating experiential marketing campaigns that truly resonate with people.
In addition to having a great understanding of the industry, we also had a long-standing history of deep-rooted working relationships with clients, which helped tremendously when we started The XP Agency, allowing us to immediately work with big brands like Coca-Cola, Netflix, and Toyota in our first year.
How has the agency thrived during the pandemic? What kept you going, and how were you able to continue to work when others were trying to find ways to stay afloat?
Most competitors transitioned their existing events into virtual experiences, and this is where many agencies missed the mark because many events did not translate well into a virtual space. We never believed that you could just take a dynamic experience that would have been produced at an event like SXSW or NCAA March Madness and then stream it via Zoom. That iteration of the experience fell flat in our minds. We also did not want to create reactionary experiences.
The key to our success is three-fold: 1. We did not create reactionary campaigns. Everything that we presented to our clients had to make strategic sense to achieve their client’s business objective. The sole reason could not be “because of the coronavirus.” 2. We continued to think big. We did not allow the pandemic to limit the way we developed ideas. To create impactful marketing campaigns, we knew we still had to push boundaries. 3. We redefined what experiential meant. We realized that when the industry used the term experiential marketing, what they really meant were “live events.” So we had to redefine what a branded experience looked like outside of a live event, which led to our agency developing experiences in other areas. This was the genesis for the thinking behind the animated short we conceived for Aflac, where we featured the brand’s biggest asset, the Aflac duck, and incorporated him into a dynamic cinematic work to convey the role that Aflac plays in people’s lives. The short is currently available on Roku (limited time) and also at www.parkbenchfilm.com
The animated short for Aflac recently premiered at Sundance’s Brand + Story Tellers, and Nas was a music supervisor. How were you able to land that and get Nas on board?
Our roots are in the music industry, where we both worked for a decade before transitioning into marketing. Adolfo had a previous working relationship with Nas from his time at Interscope Records. Once we saw how the film was developing, our client had a strong vision for Nas’ involvement. Aflac knew and was adamant that Nas had to be a part of the work. Adolfo reconnected with Nas, who fell in love with the vision of the film, so he agreed to provide the music supervision of the short.
What tips could you offer regarding the survival of working through the coronavirus pandemic?
The coronavirus pandemic really changed the world and the way we live. People’s behaviors shifted, and the way we move and operate is very different than it was just a few years ago. Instead of seeing this as problematic, businesses should consider that these changes in behavior actually created a desperate need to solve new challenges. This is the greatest opportunity for businesses in any industry today. The key is being able to understand the role that your business, product, or service plays in your customers’ new lifestyle, and adapt, if necessary, to fit their needs.
As an experiential agency, what’s in store for the future?
Now that we’ve expanded our definition of experiential marketing to develop experiences outside of the confines of a live event, the world has literally become a play space to create branded engagements and campaigns for our clients.
MLB’s First and Only Black CEO, Derek Jeter, Resigns From the Miami Marlins
As Major League Baseball is embroiled in a contract dispute that threatens to delay like the start of the season, one baseball legend will not be around when all is resolved. New York Yankees great Derek Jeter has resigned as the Miami Marlins’ CEO.
“Today I am announcing that the Miami Marlins and I are officially ending our relationship and I will no longer serve as CEO nor as a shareholder in the Club. We had a vision five years ago to turn the Marlins franchise around, and as CEO, I have been proud to put my name and reputation on the line to make our plan a reality. Through hard work, trust and accountability, we transformed every aspect of the franchise, reshaping the workforce, and developing a long-term strategic plan for success.
“That said, the vision for the future of the franchise is different than the one I signed up to lead. Now is the right time for me to step aside as a new season begins.”
The team’s owner, Bruce Sherman also released a statement Monday regarding Jeter’s departure.
“The Miami Marlins and Derek Jeter announced today that they have agreed to officially end their relationship,” Sherman said. “The Marlins thank Derek for his many contributions and wish him luck in his future endeavors.
Jeter was hired when Sherman’s ownership group purchased the team in August 2017. The Major League Baseball Hall of Famer owned a 4% stake in the franchise.
As the tea’s chief executive officer, Jeter oversaw the day-to-day operations and reportedly was at the end of a five-year deal that expired later this year.
Jeter, who played his entire Hall of Fame career with the New York Yankees, won five World Series in a 20-year MLB career that ended in 2014. He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2020. The popular player made his major league debut in May 1995, winning Rookie of the Year in 1996. He was also the most valuable player of a World Series and an All-Star Game.
Less than a year ago, ESPN announced that a multipart documentary series is being produced about the legendary, engimatic shortstop.
VIDEO: Russians Mock African Students With Bananas And Racial Slurs
On January 20, a video was shot with several clips of two unidentified Russian people interacting with and calling African students discriminatory slurs while handing them bananas.
The video, shot at Moscow State University of Civil Engineering, has sparked attention on Reddit, as well as on Russian social media channels. The video features a Russian filming and another handing out bananas and throwing snowballs at the African students, using the slur “monkey,” as well as other insults.
The nature of the video sheds light on the ongoing racism against foreign students in Russia.
Moscow State University of Civil Engineering has more than 200 foreign students from 35 countries. A number of partnerships between Russia and Africa, including scholarships, provides opportunities for students to study. In 2012, up to 27,000 African students were studying in Russian universities.
A Congolese student, Christ Dinga, 27, began pursuing his studies in Russia in 2015. According to France’s The Observers, Dinga said he has witnessed different accounts of racism at the Moscow university, but not to the extent of the video.
“In Russia, I personally have been a victim of racism on several occasions. When people see me, the first thing they do is laugh: ‘Look, a Black man. What is he doing here?’ There is mockery every day,” Dinga said.
While speaking of his own experiences, Dinga said he had not witnessed racism to the extent of the video. But did expand on the details that occurred.
“The first person in the video is an Angolan student who defends himself with aggression, using rude insults too,” Dinga explained. The second student is a Nigerian and accepted the banana without realizing it is for humiliation. The third is Angolan. And the fourth student is a Guinean. With him, a fight broke out, but the Russians cut out the part of the video with the fight.”
Reports of daily racial discrimination have flooded with stories of Black people, including Russian-born people with mixed heritage and people from African and Caribbean countries working or studying in Russia. Incidents span from refusal of taxi service to being turned away from restaurants and cafes.
“There are many foreign students at our university who come from Africa, Asia, the Middle East. I can say that many African students are victims of racism and discrimination. I speak of Africans because I am a witness and I know what is happening in the African community here. I can’t speak for other communities,” Dinga said.
A Black Female Ph.D. Student On Mission To Graduate 10,000 Black Engineers By 2025
Favour Nerrise, a Black engineering Ph.D. student at Stanford University, wants to graduate 10,000 Black engineering students a year by 2025.
There is currently a shortage of Black engineering talent. According to DevColor In Motion, a non-profit that helps companies find Black tech talent, just 5% of developers, engineers, and programmers in the U.S. are Black. Nerrise knows this well: She’s the only Black woman in her 160-person electrical engineering Ph.D. class.
Now, Nerrise and the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), where Nerrise serves as a national chairperson, want to increase the number of Black engineers through Game Change 2025, a comprehensive plan Nerrise implemented with the goal of having 10,000 Black engineers graduate annually by 2025.
Nerrise told CNBC there are about 6,000 Black engineers who graduate annually, but she and the NSBE want to increase that while also becoming a household name. The NSBE works to help Black engineers excel academically and succeed professionally through youth workshops, engineering camps, and scholarships.
“We’re completely redefining what it means to be an NBSE member and what the NBSE identity looks like,” she told CNBC.
In addition to engineering, Black representation in technology, cybersecurity, and the finance industry are also lacking. Each industry also has a group of nonprofits dedicated to increasing Black representation.
In order to meet its goal, the NSBE is making several changes, including exposing children to engineering in general at a younger age, which Nerrise says is paramount to their success.
“We found that if the kids weren’t exposed early, Black and brown students typically were at a disadvantage of catching up in mathematics and science,” Nerrise added.
The NSBE is also focused on pushing change at corporate leadership levels and making sure companies bear more responsibility when it comes to Black representation in their hiring as well as the development of their employees.
The NSBE’s board of corporate affiliates, which includes Goldman Sachs, Google, and Merck, will also assist in the effort. The organization has also tapped the educational non-profit INROADS to publish a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) corporate index based on experiences members of the NSBE have had at major companies in order to hold them accountable to their DEI pledges.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics engineers have a median annual wage of $91,010 and the industry projects to have employment growth of nearly 140,000 new jobs over the next decade, meaning now is a good time to get into the field.
TikToker Says Atlanta Esthetician Denied His Refund After Chemical Peel Burned His Skin
For this TikToker, a session with an Atlanta esthetician left him with a $150 chemical peel, second-degree burns, and no refund.
In disappointment, Neyo (@neyoprettyboyrealness) revealed the extent of his severe burns in a TikTok video which amassed 2.4 million views by Monday, The Daily Dot reported. The comments were first disabled; now it seems the video has been taken down entirely.
The TikToker claimed that the skincare professional did not give him a refund as she warned him about the possible damaging risks.
While the views racked up, Neyo decided to take his concerns to Instagram, where he received an abundance of support on his journey to healing.
“My life is over,” Neyo wrote in the caption of the Instagram post. “I don’t know what else to do.”
One user wrote, “I pray that things will get better for you my love. I’ll definitely send up a prayer for you.”
In another now-disabled Instagram video, Neyo opened up about his skin issues prior to getting the treatment. He says he was just a child when he received extensive skin grafts after suffering severe burns that left him near death.
The telling of his childhood experience concerned other Instagram users that he had not followed his esthetician’s advice following the chemical peel. Comments also suggested that the TikToker should have not undergone the chemical peel with his skin history.
“The skin grafts… could be the reason your skin reacted the way it did to the chemical peel,” one user wrote in the comments.
In response to his uneasiness, Shamari-Rene Cherry, founder of Diamond Facez Skincare Bar, who performed the chemical peel, posted a nearly 20-minute video to Instagram to defend her reputation.
In the video, Cherry explains that she does not offer chemical peels to first-time clients. She goes into the process, saying there is nothing glamorous about the peels, as it takes about 7 to 10 days to heal, sometimes longer. She accuses Neyo of picking at the skin before fully healing, which resulted in the painful results.
“My client basically didn’t trust the process. That’s the process of a chemical peel,” she said.
“It was triggering for him, and he overreacted.”
Shortly thereafter, Neyo followed up with posting screenshots of interactions between himself and Cherry, including her refusal to refund him for the service.
According to The Daily Dot, Cherry responded with posting a video from TikToker and fellow esthetician @picklevikk, who sides with her belief that Neyo didn’t wait for the skin to heal.
House Finally Passes Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act Making Lynching A Federal Hate Crime
After failing to pass anti-lynching bills more than 200 times since 1900, the House finally passed a bill making lynching a federal hate crime.
Dubbed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, lawmakers passed legislation on Monday in a 422-3 vote, NBC Newsreports. As part of the new bill, crimes can be prosecuted as lynching when a conspiracy to commit a hate crime results in death or serious bodily injury.
Those found guilty of lynching can face up to 30 years in prison. Introduced by Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill, Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Andrew S. Clyde, R-Ga. were among those who voted against the new bill.
“By passing my Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act, the House has sent a resounding message that our nation is finally reckoning with one of the darkest and most horrific periods of our history and that we are morally and legally committed to changing course,” Rush said.
BREAKING: The House of Representatives just passed my Emmett Till #AntilynchingAct by a vote of 422–3!
This bill will ensure that the full force of the federal government is ALWAYS brought to bear on individuals who commit the monstrous act of lynching.
Named in honor of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago who was lynched in 1955 after being accused of whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. Till was abducted from his family’s home, tortured, and fatally shot before being tossed into the Tallahatchie River.
While Till’s killers were arrested and charged with murder, they were eventually acquitted by an all-white, all-male jury. Following the acquittal, they sold their story of killing Till to a journalist, PBSreports. The murder horrified the nation and helped sparked the civil rights movement that kicked off with the Montgomery bus boycott three months later.
One of Till’s family members, who lived with the teen until his murder, applauded the new anti-lynching bill, as noted by ABC 7 Chicago.
“Hopefully people will think twice before they go out and commit a crime against a different person because of their race or gender or lifestyle,” Ollie Gordon, Emmett Till’s cousin said.
