Teen Charged With Murder Getting Social Media Support Behind Bars
FORT WORTH (CBS11) - Hashtags, t-shirts and millions of YouTube views did nothing to keep a teen rapper and murder suspect from moving to an adult jail Thursday.
Taymor McIntyre will be in the Tarrant County jail until at least early August, when there is a hearing to certify him as an adult in a capital murder case.
McIntyre, who also goes by the name Tay-K 47, is connected with the 2016 robbery and murder of Ethan Walker.
He returned to Texas this week and was in a juvenile court Thursday, for the first time since U.S. Marshals captured him in New Jersey last month.
He had been on the run after a judge released him from detention on the murder charge, and he cut off an electronic monitoring bracelet.
Walker's parents, Richard and Roberta, said they are confident that this time McIntyre will stay locked up. The case though they said, highlights a concern with young criminals, even beyond their son's case.
"I think lately we've just been going nuts with this," Roberta Walker said. "And I think our kids are killing each other and killing themselves, and it's not just a matter for the justice system."
McIntyre said nothing in court Thursday. He has said plenty though in his music, now played millions of times since he was captured.
In his song "The Race," he raps about shooting someone, trying to beat the case, then running when he can't beat it. It has more than two-million plays on YouTube, and almost another two-million on Soundcloud.
The hashtag #FreeTayK has started appearing on Twitter. T-shirts with the same slogan are for sale online.
The Walkers said McIntyre's fans are failing to understand there are real victims in the story described in his lyrics.
"They don't connect a person to those actions," said Richard Walker. "It's not just humanity, there's no empathy. There's no sense of conscience."