What happened to Lil Tjay? Who shot rapper, how is he after surgery, and who has been arrested after shooting?

Lil Tjay, known for songs like Calling My Phone and In My Head, has undergone emergency surgery after he suffered “multiple gunshot wounds” following an attempted armed robbery in Edgewater, New Jersey.

This is everything we know so far about the incident.

Who is Lil Tjay?

Lil Tjay, whose real name is Tione Jayden Merritt, is an American rapper who first found success in 2018 with his song Resume.

He was born in New York City, in the Bronx, on 30 April 2001.

In 2016, he found himself sentenced to a year in a youth detention centre at the age of 15 after spending his teenage years getting into fights and taking part in petty robberies.

It was after he returned home in late 2017 that he began releasing his music on SoundCloud, having spent the previous year writing lyrics.

Talking to Rolling Stone in 2019, the rapper said: “It’s not nothing that I would want to do again, but I learned a lot from it. I feel like if I wasn’t to go to jail, I probably would be the person I am - I wouldn’t.

“Cause I wouldn’t have sat down and wrote those songs and I never would’ve been able to focus on what I want to accomplish. So it’s like it was actually a good thing for me.

“It made me open my eyes and stuff like that.”

After his song Resume became a viral hit, Tjay started taking his rap career more seriously in 2018 and released more highly successful tracks - Brothers, Goat and None of Your Love. That December he also released his EP No Comparison.

In October 2019, Tjay released his debut album True 2 Myself which debuted and peaked at number five on the US Billboard 200.

He released what would become his highest charting single, Calling My Phone, in February 2021, which debuted at number three on the Billboard Hot 100.

Tjay then released his second studio album Destined 2 Win in April 2021.

Has he been shot?

On Wednesday (22 June), police responded to a double shooting near Edgewater, New Jersey, where the rapper was shot.

According to the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, the shooting was the result of an attempted armed robbery.

Police said that Tjay was shot multiple times and that his friend who he was with, named Antoine Boyd, was shot once.

The rapper was admitted to hospital for emergency surgery following the incident. He has reportedly made it out of surgery.

A tweet from the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office said that Tjay’s condition has been “updated from critical to stable”.

Boyd had been “admitted to hospital with non-life threatening injuries in good condition”.

Has a suspect been arrested?

When the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office confirmed that the shooting occured, it added that three arrests had been made.

Later on Wednesday, Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella revealed that Mohamed Konate, 27, had been taken into custody on suspicion of shooting Tjay.

Konate is facing three counts of first degree attempted murder, three counts of first degree armed robbery, and mutlple weapons-related charges.

Tjay’s friends Boyd and Jeffrey Valdez, who was also present during the shooting, were also both arrested and each charged with second degree unlawful possession of a weapon.

According to a statement from the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, Boyd and Valdez “were remanded to the Bergen County Jail pending a first appearance in Central Judicial Processing Court”.