The nation awoke this morning to the news that 36-year-old Gilbert Alamilla, a talented musician widely known as Mr.Program was fatally stabbed last night.
Alamilla was found dead in a pool of his own blood. He'd been socializing with friends at a house on Simon Lamb street when a cousin of his host showed up and threatened to kill them all.
The story goes that this cousin gave one of Alamilla's companions a knife and commanded that he use it to kill the musician, telling him that if couldn't do it he'd be the one to die.
And seemingly fearing for his own life, that companion took the knife and stabbed Alamilla inflicting what would become a fatal wound.
It's an unimaginable scenario and Alamilla's family and friends are still reeling from the random cruelty of his end.
I spoke to them today about the son they've lost; they called him an artist cut off just as his star was attempting to rise.
This is the house on Simon Lamb Street where Gilbert Alamilla aka Mr. Program met a cruel end.
Alamilla would go there to hang out and maybe have a few drinks but tensions had been brewing. And, this morning we spoke to Mr. Program's father who told us that his son was too trusting.
Martin Alamilla, Father of the deceased
"I always talk to him. He was the biggest. The day before yesterday he and I were talking right here and I told him why don't you move from those people there, I don't know but he just liked to humble himself with everybody like he trusted everybody and nowadays you can't trust your friends it's like what the music says friends kill friends."
"I don't know why they would do that to the bwoy he was telling me that they're charging him a 70 dollars that he didn't know about and they said he was staying there but he only goes there to drink with them and sometimes he gets drunk you know and then he stays there but then they charge him for where he stays there."
Allamilla's family will remember him fondly but they say his drinking was his downfall.
Karen Alamilla, Mother of the deceased
"He just went to live there like a week or to because he said someone of the guys that he hangs out with rented him a room back there. I just feel numb I don't even know what to say."
"He was a sweet loving person always giving and you know he had his little problems but I think the drinking is what messed him up. You know when he gets drunk and he probably got into some problem with the people where he lives and then they hurt him."
Kareem Alamilla, Brother of the deceased
"He was always giving how could you hurt someone who's always helping, that sometime he makes the family upset because he gives them more than he gives us. He showed them attention more than he showed us but with all that we still loved him so we feel it very much, we feel it a whole lot to see our number one superstar left us now, left us just like that and he had a lot of music coming, a lot of videos coming."
Mr. Program's Rise
(May 22, 2009)
"Coming out of challenging circumstances, Program himself was aware of the tightrope he walked between making it and not making it out alive - as he told us in 2009."
Mr. Program's Rise
(May 22, 2009)
Mr. Program,
"You know we grow up ghetto youth. My father is a vendor, he sells snow cones. My mom has ten kids, lives home, and basically we grow up poor. We know what it is to have no food or little bit of nothing. We go to school with sometimes one blank, not tennis a slippers. We know that but we are not attacking nobody and saying it is anyone's fault. We know ending of the day we will always say the system, the system but I get tired of blaming the system and regardless of whoever fault and whoever has their part to play, I figure I have my mines too and I push my music how I believe I could do it and the feedback is nice and we are getting there so I guess from now go back I will just push the music until the day we rest."
And it's that clarity of purpose and that push which led to his greatest hit, "See I Rise" - a track that's already becoming the anthem of his legacy. Its lyrics now seem eerily prophetic.
Kareem Alamilla, Brother of the deceased
"See I Rise was like a life experience for him something he went through, something that he was visualizing from the very start."
Aaron Lauriano, Producer and Friend
"The message is clear he said "see me fall and die" it's clear nobody wants to see nobody rise and that's what it looks like, it looks like if you are fighting to come up somebody is going to cut you down."
But while he may have been cut down - his music, and its message will endure - and perhaps even resurge.
Cherisse Halsall:
"How does it feel now that he wrote those words and then this is."
Kareem Alamilla, Brother of the deceased
"Well that makes me know that his music will live forever and ever ever until thy kingdom come."
Police have put out a Wanted Poster identifying the man they believe to be Gilbert Alamilla's killer.
He is 28-year-old Raheem Devaun Marsden, and a reward of up to $2,000 if being offered for information leading to his arrest.
Those with information as to Marsden's whereabouts are asked to call 922 or use the P3 app to provide any information.
