Darel "Creep" Evans, who was fatally shot Dec. 8 in Newark, was known to many as a cast member of the documentary "Brick City," a former Crip and an anti-violence advocate.
IRVINGTON -- Darel "Creep" Evans, who was fatally shot Dec. 8 in Newark, was known to many as a cast member of the documentary "Brick City," a former Crip, and an anti-violence advocate.
Family and friends, who were at his funeral on Friday at Irvington's Christian Pentecostal Church, said the 33-year-old was also an avid fan of comedians like Richard Pryor and Eddie Griffin. Evans was a local stand-up comic since 2009 who would rip on gang clothes, they said.
His cousin Andaiye Taylor, who grew up in the same home as Evans, said she was in disbelief about his death. Displaying a photo of a beaming Evans at his eighth-grade graduation, she said, that "this" is the Evans she remembers.
"Darel comes from a very large and loving family and he has a lot of friends," Taylor said. "He was just a loving, funny, nice person."
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While the Essex County Prosecutor's Office has only acknowledged that an investigation into Evans's death continues, a couple attendees close to Evans said they firmly believed his death had nothing to do with gang violence.
Little is known about his death: at 11:58 p.m. on Dec. 8, he was shot in the 300 block of Clinton Place, authorities said. The Prosecutor's Office did not respond to a request Friday for additional details about the status of the investigation into the murder.
According to his obituary, Evans, who is survived by his parents and fiancee Leandra Lassiter, was born in University Hospital in Newark and grew up on Wainwright Street, just around the corner from his paternal grandparents' home.
He loved swimming at the Newark YMCA, playing baseball and basketball, and graduated high school in New Jersey, though in between he briefly lived with his father in Pennsylvania and had a daughter in 1999.
He later had a second daughter with Jessica "Jayda" Jacques, who worked with him to help at-risk youth and in 2008 appeared with him in the award-winning five-part docuseries about Newark, "Brick City," which premiered on The Sundance Channel.
Evans, who friends said spoke to kids in schools and at community events about choosing a better path and worked with local charitable organizations, was also featured in the show's second season and in the docu-soap "Jersey Strong."
Before the series, Evans was part of a positive gang collaboration called Saving Ourselves, Inc. that strived to help kids in the neighborhood, noted friend Michele De La Cruz. Through that group, De La Cruz, a clinical psychologist, met Evans while she was studying therapeutic intervention to gang violence for her master's thesis, she said. In 2005, she founded the gang-intervention organization Brighter Dayz Inc., she said.
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"He gave me hell... They're like 'oh here comes this college person,'" but he wanted to improve himself, De La Cruz said. "He did a '360' with his life."
Friends said the documentary series was a big part of that.
"'Brick City' showed different components of the city of Newark... It made a lot of things more public to the nation," said his best friend James "Loose" White III, 32.
"There's a lot of struggles going on. Sometimes we don't understand what's the struggles, about what's the dynamics... There's political things going on, there's grassroots going on, there's love going on, amongst the (killings)."
The documentary, White said, gave Evans, an ex-Crip, the opportunity to break out of his "Creep" persona.
"You also got to see Darel. In it, it showed a lot of compassion... being around the kids, being domesticated in a way where you might catch him washing the dishes," he added. "Not just running the streets, not just what your mind is saying this type of person is supposed to be doing."
According to "Brick City" producer Robin Binky Brown, a longtime family friend, the producers saw Jacques speaking at an event about her relationship with Evans; Jacques said she was a "Blood" and Evans was a "Crip," rival gangs.
That led them to feature the couple in the show, Binky Brown said.
"The culture of the gangs that we didn't know, we know now," he said. "They're just regular people. They're looking for a place to lay their heads... It has a pathos of violence that goes with it."
A grieving Jacques did not want to comment, but Sam Jean, her manager and Evans's former manager, said he was sad Evans was getting so much media attention after his death because of the documentary.
"I wish they would have talked about his life," he said.
Laura Herzog may be reached at lherzog@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @LauraHerzogL. Find NJ.com on Facebook.