The comrade of the actor Ice-T and who was killed in Queens was about to “do it,” a friend said Saturday.
“He had just gotten the fruits of his labor and someone stole this from him,” Gilbert Cantres said of Joseph “Taheim” Bryan. “That’s why he’s killing the whole family. I had no enemies around here, or as far as I know. ”
Bryan, 50, died Thursday night while sitting in his brand new Mercedes in Long Island City. The shooter fired about seven shots into the driver’s car of Bryan’s car and hit him four times in the arm and torso, sources said.
He had just written and produced the film “Equal Standard”, starring Ice-T. Star “Law & Order: SVU” has tweeted about Bryan Friday night saying, “Taheim was a GOOD man making positive moves.”
Cantres said he had known Bryan since they were young children, and even settled with the family on an Astoria housing project. He married and later divorced Bryan’s sister, but they stayed close.
“That was my brother,” he said. “He was my brother-in-law, but he was more like a brother to me.”
Cantres said Bryan “took a different direction: from being unproductive to being a businessman and still not doing well.”
“He didn’t deserve to do it that way,” he said. “It simply came to our notice then. Words can’t express what went through my mind when I heard it. “
Elaine Wilkins, Cantres’ fiancé who had known Bryan for twenty years, called the victim “very elegant.”
“He had no middle bones in his body,” he said. “He was a damn good man. It’s very amazing. It’s like a dream, you haven’t woken up yet. “
