The Bronx man found beaten to death Monday inside an ambulette he was driving was a groundbreaking musician and devoted member of a collective dedicated to promoting all genres of Black music.
Peter Forrest, 64, was known as P. Fluid when he sang in the original lineup of 24-7 Spyz, a South Bronx-based band that mixed metal, hardcore, punk and funk and opened for Jane’s Addiction on their Ritual de lo Habitual tour in 1990-91.
Forrest was also a founding member of the Black Rock Coalition, said his former longtime girlfriend Chiedza Maconnen, 55, who used to be known as Charmelle Dukes.
“He was my first love,” Maconnen said in a phone call from Ghana, where she now lives part time. “I knew Peter from when I was 18 until I was about 35.”
The pair met when Maconnen was visiting a cousin in Harlem from her home in Chicago and the two hit it off, embarking on a relationship that ended partly due to the demands of Forrest’s touring but later picked back up and included a six-year stretch of living together.
“Music was his life and advancing Black rock was his life,” she said. “He was passionate about that. He really helped pave that road for a lot of people to understand that Black musicians aren’t just rappers or R&B or soul, we’re rockers too.”
The first single from 24-7 Spyz was a cover of Kool & the Gang’s “Jungle Boogie,” and their debut album, “Harder Than You,” was released to critical acclaim in 1989.
“He loved to be on the road, that was his happy place,” Maconnen said. “He loved being on stage, he loved stage diving, he loved being among the people.
“He was the most fun-loving guy,” she remembered. “He was funny, he liked to laugh a lot, he was like a big kid.”
After leaving the band, Forrest formed P. Fluid and the P. Fluid Foundation, and later rejoined 24-7 Spyz temporarily before forming a new band, BlkVampires, performing as Forrest Thinner. The band released a song in 2015 called “Eric Garner.”
“He was very, very political and social with his music,” Maconnen said. “All of his music was very connected to activism and having something real to say. He was a true artist in every sense of the word.”
Forrest’s final musical project, BlkVampiresX, was his first solo act.
Maconnen said Forrest’s time in the Army was an important part of his life and remembered a Veterans Day the couple spent in Washington, D.C., visiting Arlington Cemetery.
“Being in the military was something he was proud of. He always talked about [it],” she said. “I think he wanted to do more but music kind of called him, so that’s where he ended up.”
New York City was another one of Forrest’s loves, Maconnen said.
“He loved New York,” she said. “You could never get Peter to move out of New York, he was Mr. New York. You could not say one bad thing about New York around Peter.”
Forrest was last heard from by colleagues at the ambulette company at about 8 a.m. Monday. When he failed afterward to make a few pickups and stopped answering his phone, they became concerned.
A coworker at Marquis Ambulette used GPS to track Forrest’s ambulette to Castle Hill Ave. near Howe Ave. in Castle Hill around 10:30 a.m. Monday, police sources said.
When the coworker found his ambulette, the front-door window had been broken and Forrest was lying face down in the back in a pool of blood, cops said. According to police, Forrest was beaten to death.
“We are cooperating and it’s a terrible tragedy for the family and [our] hearts are going out to his family,” said the colleague, who did not want to share his name.
Maconnen was stunned to learn of Forrest’s murder and baffled by the circumstances of the killing in a remote corner of the Bronx.
“I don’t know him to have had any enemies. He was a musician, he wasn’t that type of guy,” she said. “I never saw Peter in a fight.”
She also said Forrest had never been a drinker or used drugs, and was street smart.
“He didn’t deserve that,” Maconnen said. “He is the last person you would think would pass like that. He just wasn’t involved in stuff.
“Peter was a good person who loved music,” she said. “He did a lot for me, he showed me a lot. He was an honest person who worked hard — he always made his own way.”
There have been no arrests.
With Kerry Burke and Nicholas Williams