Story by AL BAKER and COLIN MOYNIHAN
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NY TimesWhenever the 32-year-old city bus driver showed up with the videos he had produced of aspiring rap artists, his co-workers would gather around tables in a lounge at their Queens bus depot and watch the musical scenes on a big television.
Mr. Saunders's co-workers created a memorial.“He loved music,” said Donna Jones, a Metropolitan Transportation Authority driver. “He loved art. He got into it and he excelled,” she said of her colleague, Andre Saunders Jr.
“He always had his videos on,” another driver, Cleveland Chandler, said of Mr. Saunders. “You had a whole crew in here Thursday watching the videos.”
Andre Saunders Jr., 32, loved to make rap videos.On Sunday, Mr. Saunders was killed, along with another man, Lemarr Wilson, in a shooting at 106th Street and 109th Avenue, in Jamaica. Mr. Saunders was hit in the chest and Mr. Wilson, 21, was hit in the head, the police said.
A third man, Montique Brunson, 20, was hit in the left ankle in Sunday’s shooting and was expected to survive. The police said that Mr. Brunson was not cooperating with authorities.
No arrests had been made in connection with the shooting as of early Monday evening, and no motive has been identified. The police were investigating whether Mr. Saunders was hit by gunfire intended for someone else.
Portions of the shooting were caught on video surveillance cameras posted outside the South Jamaica Houses, a public housing project, investigators said.
Officials were investigating whether the violence was connected to a March 29 shooting during which Mr. Wilson, who lived at 145-98 226th Street in Rosedale, was wounded by a bullet that struck his hip.
Investigators believe that Mr. Saunders might have been doing promotional work for Mr. Wilson’s brother, who is an aspiring rap artist.
In March, Mr. Wilson, who the police said had been arrested at least 16 times on charges including robbery and narcotics, was shot while walking in front of 104-40 164th Street, in Jamaica, Queens, according to court papers. He was on his way to 107th Avenue and 164th Street, where a rap video was being filmed, law enforcement officials said. There was no indication that Mr. Saunders was involved in the making of that video, one official said.
Victor Patton, 25, who is also known as
Vic Damone, has been charged with first-degree assault and other charges in connection with the March shooting of Mr. Wilson, the court papers said.
On Sunday, investigators found a video camera inside Mr. Saunders’s car, which was parked near the shooting scene, but it was believed that no video was being made at the time.
On Monday, Mr. Saunders’s colleagues gathered around plastic tables in the lounge on the ground floor of the Baisley Park Depot, on Guy R. Brewer Boulevard in South Jamaica, and remembered their friend’s enthusiasm for life.
He enjoyed filming and producing rap videos. He had favorite routes to drive his bus, particularly the ones along the wide-open spaces of Far Rockaway, on roads he was familiar with. He did not like driving into Manhattan.
As Ms. Jones stood in the lounge near a wall where a notice of Mr. Saunders’s death had been posted, she used colorful words to describe him.
“A nice young guy with a good head on his shoulders,” she said. “Sweet. Just a genuine, happy, big teddy bear.”
Mr. Saunders had been a driver for Jamaica Buses Inc., since March 21, 2004, according to Aaron Donovan, a spokesman for the M.T.A. Between January 2005 and February 2006, seven bus companies, including Jamaica Buses, were taken over by the M.T.A. and came to form the M.T.A. Bus Company, he said.
Mr. Saunders, a member of Local 100 of the Transit Workers Union, had been an M.T.A. employee since January 2006, Mr. Donovan said. Since then, he worked the so-called extra list, meaning he was not assigned to a specific route, Mr. Donovan said.
“He could operate any of the routes assigned to the Baisley Park Depot,” Mr. Donovan said. “That would be the Q110, Q111, Q112, Q113 and the QM21.”
Hector Comrie, a representative for the bus drivers, said Mr. Saunders and his wife moved last week to a house in Roosevelt, Long Island. He said they had no children. He said that he had spoken to Mr. Saunders’s wife and other relatives and that they were distraught.
He recalled a story about Mr. Saunders’s hiring. It was about five years ago, when Mr. Comrie was driving for Jamaica Buses, before the M.T.A. takeover.
“He kept coming in here every day, asking me for a job,” Mr. Comrie said. “He was very polite. Eventually we hired him.”
It was then that Mr. Saunders became part of the group that had access to the bus depot lounge where he showed his videos.
Toby Lyles contributed reporting.
