A friend of Brooklyn rapper Fabolous was knifed to death outside a trendy Manhattan nightspot on Friday (November 23).


Shamel McKinney, 25,was involved in an altercation that turned ugly when he was stabbed in the chest and back at Duvet. He’d reportedly been partying with Fab (born John Jackson) during the hours leading up to the event, but it is unclear whether or not Fab was around when McKinney was attacked, according to New York’s Daily News. Though police had been looking to question Fabolous after the violent attack, the rapper’s lawyer said he wasn’t at the club that night.


“I think police confirmed that my client was in fact not even there,” Alberto Ebanks said yesterday (November 25). “He has reached out to the family and extended his condolences.”


The victim’s family has also said the rapper wasn’t there. But that goes against witness accounts which place Fab at the club at the time of the murder. Witnesses said Mckinney staggered out of the club just after 3:30 a.m. and collapsed on W 21st St with blood pouring from his wounds.

“The fight broke out, but he had nothing to do with it,” said the victim’s brother Darryl McKinney, 23, who was at the club. “He got caught in the middle.” Police said the stabbing may have stemmed from a fight between two women in the club, but it wasn’t clear how McKinney became involved.


After checking the surveillance video, cops found a knife with a bloody, 7-inch blade in a Dumpster near the club a few hours after the killing. Police haven’t made an arrest or determined what led to McKinney’s death.


The murder occurred less than a block from Sean “Diddy” Combs’ former restaurant, Justin’s, where Fab was shot in October of 2006 after a member of his entourage allegedly snatched a chain from NBA player Sebastian Telfair. Cops found two guns in the vehicle Fabolous drove off in after the shooting. Weapons charges against the rapper were dropped last summer.