A video game streamer and sports fanatic with more than 33,000 YouTube subscribers died in a broad daylight drive-by shooting in Harlem, his family and friends told the Daily News Thursday.
Jeremiah Cummings, 37, built his following over the past three years on YouTube as “JermSportsTV,” posting pro sports clips and videos from Madden ’24.
“He loved sports, commentary. He was just about to get his setup going. He used to record games in the hood. He used to take his phone out, no camera, record them, edit them, post them,” his brother, who didn’t give his name, told the Daily News. “All the people in the neighborhood who play basketball, they used to tell him, ‘Yo, I got a game, come out and record.’”
Cummings was killed on W. 118th St. and Frederick Douglass Blvd., a block away from his home, just before 1:40 p.m. Tuesday. His slaying came less than 10 hours after cops say a woman bashed a man to death with a wooden table leg just a half mile uptown, on Hancock Place near St. Nicholas Ave.
Surveillance video obtained by The News shows him talking with at least three men next to a black Dodge Charger parked on the corner. As they quarrel, a white Honda sedan slowly drives by, and someone inside fires off shots.
The men scatter, and Cummings, who fell to the ground, starts to crawl around the Charger, a bullet wound in his back. He briefly stands up, staggers to the sidewalk and collapses.
Cummings’ brother and one of his friends disagreed over whether he was arguing with the men or, as his sibling believes, just “chilling” with them because they were friends,.
Cummings had recently moved from a shelter into supportive housing, and helped build sidewalk cafes for several local restaurants like The Fox Harlem, his brother said. He also helped canvas for local political campaigns and did work in schools, his brother said.
“Handyman, he just do everything. Everything you need him to do. He was always working. Always trying to work,” the brother said.
His YouTube following picked up over the past two weeks, after he posted something about two WNBA players, one of them Angel Reese, who recently made the roster of the league’s All-Star Game.
“It just shot up in a couple weeks. overnight, for real. He posted two WNBA players, girl players. That got him views and overnight his subscribers skyrocketed,” his brother said. “It was crazy. it was just crazy. One day we checked and we were like, whoa, out of nowhere. It would be like 300 subscribers, overnight it went up 10,000.”
“Couldn’t believe it. That’s when he said, ‘I got to take this serious,’” his brother continued.
He said he had spoken to his brother about two hours before the shooting, and all seemed well. Then he got the call from a friend — Cummings had been shot.
“I was really crying. It hurt me,” he said.
Cummings’ longtime pal and neighbor, Carmen Chauvin, 49, described him as a “real sweetheart” and a friendly, protective busybody.
“I can’t believe he’s gone. I still can’t get over it,” she said. “It was me and my homegirl and we heard the gunshot. So we ran over there … to make sure it was none of our friends and family,” she said. But a neighbor shared the awful news. “I’m like, ‘No you’re not saying Jeremiah,” and I just bugged out. I was screaming, because he was such a sweetheart.”
Cummings didn’t use drugs or involve himself with gangs, she said, and would often chase users from his building.
“He was raised by his mom and dad in Queens. They were really strict on him. He got a really good education, he had a high school diploma, he had some college,” she said. “He kept clean, he never had no problem with nobody. He kept to himself. He and his little brother were either upstairs in his apartment playing video games or at the basketball courts playing basketball.”
Police have made no arrests in his killing.
With Rocco Parascandola
