BROOKLYN, N.Y. (PIX11) — An aspiring young artist was excited to go to Run-DMC’s Jam Master Jay’s studio to have record executives listen to her music, but her hopeful night ended with her witnessing the slain hip-hop star’s brains leak out of his head, the woman testified Thursday in court.
Yarrah Concepcion was about 18 and trying to kick-start her music career and had made an appointment at the Queens studio the fateful night Jason Mizell, better known as Jam Master Jay, was fatally shot in the head on Oct. 30, 2002.
"His brain stuff came out of his head. I just started dry heaving. I almost threw up. I knew he was gone,” she said while crying on the stand in Brooklyn federal court during the trial of Karl Jordan, Jr., 40, and Ronald Washington, 59. The defendants are accused in the killing of Mizell.
Concepcion said she was about two songs into her demo when chaos broke out while she and Mizell's associates, Randy Allen and Michael Rapley, were in the control room. She heard two gunshots go "pop pop," she said. She then tried to kick the window air conditioner unit out to escape before jumping behind the loveseat to hide, she testified.
Panicked and scared, she recalled coming out of the room holding her heart, and smelling the gun smoke. She recalled seeing Uriel “Tony” Rincon on the couch screaming in agony from the gunshot wound to his leg before spotting Mizell lying on the red rug with his arm over his head.
Concepcion asked Rincon to help her move when she went to check for a pulse and saw the gruesome head injury, knowing it was too late.
"I was frantic," she said.
Concepcion, sporting a tartan bodysuit and long blonde braids, testified she did not see the shooter.
Jordan allegedly shot Mizell point-blank in the head while the hip-hop star was on a couch playing video games in his Jamaica, Queens recording studio at around 7:30 p.m., prosecutors said. Rincon was shot in the left leg above the knee and Lydia High was found hysterical in the studio, according to authorities and the witness.
Mizell’s cousin, Stephon Watford, wasn't in the studio the night of the murder but recalled seeing Washington go back to Mizell’s sister’s house, where he and Watford were living together later that night.
“He walked into the house with a Hennessey bottle. 'Don’t throw this bottle away because this was the last bottle Jay drank out of,'" Watford told the jury had Washington said.
“He didn’t care,” Watford testified about Washington’s demeanor at the house that evening.
Days before the killing, Watford claimed Washington asked him if he had any .40 caliber bullets and warned him to stay away from the studio because something bad was about to happen. But neither statement struck him as odd. Watford testified he never told Mizell about the comments.
"He was a great person. I loved him dearly and he loved me dearly," Watford said.
The defendants are charged with murder while engaged in narcotics trafficking and firearm-related murder, prosecutors said. Jordan faces several other drug distribution charges.
Prosecutors allege Mizell was financially helping the defendants by looping them into his drug-dealing business after the group was no longer in the limelight. But Mizell had cut Jordan and Washington out of a $200,000 cocaine deal in Baltimore, which allegedly led to the fatal encounter, authorities said.
The trial resumes on Monday.
Mira Wassef is a digital reporter who has covered news and sports in the New York City area for more than a decade. She joined PIX11 News in 2022. See more of her work here.
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