YELLOW

As told to Akintola Hanif | Images by Akintola Hanif

August 11, 2013

My great friend, Trevor Franklyn Banton, a.k.a Yellowman, was shot and killed outside the Atmosphere nightclub in Newark, N.J. on August 11, 2010. He'd just left a going away party for our man Cory, who was leaving to do a seven-year bid the next day. Yellow's murder was the fourth in a string of homicides within 48 hours in Newark that summer, none of them related. Because of the unusually high death toll that week, Yellow's death was written up in a short Star-Ledger story. He was 32. His killer was never found. Today marks the three-year anniversary of his death. Below, our mutual friend Ramadan shares his memories of Yellow and describes what happened that night...Yellow was way more than another statistic to me; he was my brother. We traveled together, partied together, slept on the floor together...I’ll never forget this dude right here. Rest in Power Trev. I love you boy. -AH

When he got shot he wasn't shocked, panicking, screaming or anything. It was like he knew it was coming.

We come out the club, I hear shots and hear a car speed off. Everybody's running around going crazy but not me, I've been through this so many times before. I look down and I see Trevor crawling towards me with one hand and his head down. At that point everything was in slow motion. It was surreal. I flipped him over and he was just breathing, looking around. He had been shot in the stomach. I told him to blink and he did. I told him to blink again and he did. So I just kept talking to him, telling him to keep breathing but he started breathing slower. He was holding his stomach and I was holding his head up.

Then he let off like a thirty second sigh. An Olympic swimmer couldn't do that shit. His stomach was going in and his eyes went dim but they didn't close. I didn't realize it at that time but that was the life going out of him. His mouth closed and his head dropped. He was dead. I never felt that dazed in my life. His legs just fell. His head and neck bent. He died in my arms.

I'm screaming “no, no, Yellow, Yellow,’’ but he's gone. I was laying there just holding him for about ten minutes. Then the ambulance came and I felt somebody pull me off of him and yank me to my feet. I remember seeing them putting him on the stretcher and the whole time I just couldn't stop looking in his eyes.

The cops asked me if I wanted to ride with them. You know what I told them? I told them I don't know him. They asked me if I was sure and I told them again, ‘I don't know him. I just saw the guy hurt and tried to help him.’ I already know what it is. Them muthafuckas would've had me up all night asking me all kind of questions, and tryna get me to help with their investigation but I wasn't beat.

Me and Yellow were friends since the sixth grade. He was even best man at my wedding. We used to call him white boy way back before he was Yellowman. He had way more potential than just the streets. He read hella books and was also into politics. He used to go extra hard to hold his family down and his people who were locked up. A lot of rents ain't get paid after he died.

I'ma keep it funky wit you, Trevor was a gangsta. His father was a gangster. He did it classy though. He lived like he knew his story was gonna be told. He didn't carry himself like a knucklehead and he ain’t do no bitch shit. He showed a lot of respect to people that deserved it, so he had mad love from the street and the elderly. He was always smiling, especially when he had his son. Yellow was just a funny dude, always joking, and if you knew him, you loved him.