In the early hours of July 4, a DJ just beginning to make a name for himself in the Houston music scene fell from the balcony of a high-rise apartment building and fell four stories to a lower pool deck. The only other person on the balcony that morning – the DJ’s girlfriend – said she saw her partner climb on a patio chair and throw it over the railing.
“I couldn’t possibly have pushed her over the edge,” Nishia Jackson wrote in a Facebook post, claiming that her friend “was only able to switch because she climbed on the furniture.”
“I should have literally picked her up and knocked her over, which is absolutely absurd!” Jackson continued. “WE DON’T FIGHT!”
Darian Lewis, who spun under the name DJ D Baby, died more than a week after being hospitalized from the fall, her mother said Wednesday.
“My youngest and only daughter has passed on,” Terri Lewis wrote on Facebook, “please pray for the family, my heart is heavy and broken.”
Darian Lewis had celebrated her 23rd birthday just weeks before her death. Details of her fall at 5 a.m., which took her from the 13th to the 9th floor of the downtown building, remain murky. Her friend, Jackson, took to social media just before announcing Lewis’s death, writing that she was silent “out of respect for D, watching many of you turn this tragedy into something it isn’t.”
Lewis, who usually “barely drank,” had been drunk that night, Jackson said. After being dropped off at Jackson’s apartment by a “colleague” Lewis rushed to the patio when she was told she couldn’t drive home herself, Jackson said. The DJ then reportedly climbed onto the chair and “fell over before I could save her,” according to Jackson.
“I am aware that there are many rumors going around and they are all very discouraging,” Jackson wrote. “We were far from perfect. We had issues like most though, I would never hurt her I love nor anyone in such a way.” She added that she was “devastated” by similar gossip that Lewis had tried to hurt himself.
Houston authorities have told local outlets that Lewis’ death appeared to be an accident, but an active investigation into the matter is underway.
“We’re going to trust the system and let them do their job,” Darrin Lewis, the DJ’s father, told Fox 26 Houston.
Darian Lewis claimed to be the “youngest female DJ in Houston” and as of Thursday was a rising social media star with more than 27,000 followers on Instagram. “She did things that 56-year-olds — my age — haven’t done,” her father said.
Lewis was 12 years old when she first fell in love with music, according to an electronic press kit, playing both flute and later guitar. She was given a DJ controller as a high school graduation gift and soon after, she began introducing herself as D Baby to her classmates at Texas Southern University.
“The funny thing is that I could barely DJ at the time. I saw going to college as a way to reinvent myself and start a new journey,” Lewis told VoyageHouston last year. “The rest is history in the making.”
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