Article content continued

Campbell was also known as Jahiant, a member of the hip-hop trio HalfSizeGiants.

The other members of the group are Christopher Wiens and William Moreno. They met in south Ottawa in their early teens.

Wiens said Campbell, a 41-year-old father of four, had been shot in the chest and died during surgery.

Campbell had left work at the Shaw Centre on his break to protect his daughter in the ByWard Market, Wiens said.

“He was rushing to defend his 18-year-old daughter’s dignity after she called to say she was being assaulted by a couple of men,” Wiens said.

Photo by Wayne Cuddington / Postmedia

After a 15-year hiatus, HalfSizeGiants recently released an album called Life Moves Fast. Wiens said Campbell’s legacy would be immortalized in the song Girl You Know, a song featuring Canadian superstar Danny Fernandes.

“You can hear the passion in Markland’s voice. He’s not singing about drugs and guns or bitches and hos. It’s a song about heartbreak,” Wiens said.

“He was a father, a son. One of my best friends.”

Photo by Chris Wiens photo

Earlier this year, HalfSizeGiants released a video for the song Life Moves Fast, featuring scenes from Ottawa’s streetscapes and the group’s younger days.

“Ironically, that was our signal to jump back in the game, with Life Moves Fast, and look where we are right now,” Wiens said.

Around 6 p.m. Friday, the group learned their music would be played by more radio stations. They planned a media campaign.

“And now the press rollout is starting with an obituary,” Wiens said.

According to Wiens, Campbell, then 16, led an anti-violence concert to protest the March 1994 death of Nicholas Battersby on Elgin Street.

Now 25 years later and less than a mile away from the site of the 1994 tragedy, Campbell was “maliciously gunned down defending the principle of righteousness he lived by,” Wiens said.

Artist and CHUO radio host Justin “Dynamic” Gunderson said Campbell was a “pioneer in the 613″ for hip-hop and reggae. Campbell deliberately pushed anti-violence messages through his work, Gunderson said.

Born in Jamaica, Campbell released a music video for his song Them Shoot The Youths in 2016. He said in a 2017 interview with the Jamaica Star that the song was “targeting injustice all over the world, to bring awareness to the people that they should wake up and put a stop to all these injustices.”

HalfSizeGiants gained almost instant popularity in the Ottawa hip-hop scene in the mid-1990s. The group had a unique sound, combining English and Spanish styles of rap with Campbell’s reggae style. They opened for Canadian reggae-rapper Snow in 1993, arriving on stage at what was then called the Civic Centre on the back of motorcycles. MuchMusic played their music videos.

Police reopened the crime scene around 10 a.m. Saturday.