Monday, February 9, 2009

Marvell Billups, 26, shot outside his Cleveland apartment; dispute may have been over Xbox game

CLEVELAND — The sister of a 26-year-old man shot dead early Thursday in the hallway of his Garden Valley Estates home believes he was killed for an Xbox game.

Marvell Billups died at 4:50 a.m. at MetroHealth Medical Center after being shot in the head about an hour earlier at the housing complex at East 79th Street and Kinsman Road.

Cleveland Police said they have not identified a suspect or a motive in the killing.


Billups 22-year-old sister, Matina, said her brother had stopped by her apartment earlier and she gave him a plate of spaghetti. He said he would eat it upstairs in an apartment he shares with their brother.

"He walked out the door and went up the stairs," she said. "The next thing I heard was a shot and the plate of spaghetti hit the ground."

She ran out and found in the hallway.

Matina Billups said neighbors told her that a local boy had been talking about killing her brother because of a dispute over an Xbox game.

"The boy said that my brother wasn't going to be walking these streets much longer," she said. "They said it was over an Xbox game, I didn't know he had an Xbox game."

Matina Billups said since her mother died in 2005 and her father left, Marvell Billups has been the man of the house.

"He helped raise us," she said. "He took care of me and my 3-year-old daughter, Mikeonna, and our brother. He was a good brother. Anything any of us needed, he was there."

She said Marvell Billups was taking classes to get his high school equivalency diploma.

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