By Sharon Grigsby
https://www.dallasnews.com
This story is part of The Dallas Morning News’ homicide project focused on sharing the stories of all people killed in Dallas in 2024.
Those of us who are parents of adult children can identify with the worry that at times consumed Pam and Andrew Goodin about their son Scypion.
When the Carrollton couple urged him to move out of his Lake Highlands apartment because the complex didn’t feel safe, he assured them the scene had improved — a fine place for a guy stretching his massage therapy paychecks to pursue his musical dreams.
When they pointed out he helped others at the expense of taking care of himself, 45-year-old Sip maintained he had things under control. “He had such a big heart,” Pam said.
When Pam and Andrew encouraged Sip to set better boundaries around whom he allowed into his life, he countered with, “Jesus was not judgmental.”
His devout parents always responded, “Jesus may have hung out with the downtrodden and poor in spirit, but he didn’t get caught up in their environment or take up doing the things they did.”
Pam’s concerns grew to the point that any time she heard ambulance sirens or saw a news report about an unidentified man found dead, she called Sip to make sure he was OK. With his big husky laugh, Sip would tell her not to worry.
The afternoon of April 4, Pam had an odd realization: Her day had passed without the usual thoughts of “I wonder where Sip is and if he’s OK.” After a walk through her manicured neighborhood, she told her husband an unusual, almost eerie, sense of calm had settled over her.
Not long after, a friend of Sip’s rushed to the Goodin home with the worst possible news. Their son had just been shot outside his second-floor apartment.
All of the Goodins’ worries, which Sip repeatedly pushed aside, had become a terrible reality. “If you start letting everyone in, you get caught up in stuff too,” Andrew said. “He had done things that put his life in danger.”
From the time Sip was born, Pam and Andrew devoted themselves to keeping him on the right path. Andrew owns an insurance agency in Carrollton; Pam is a retired public school teacher there.
They agreed to talk to me because, like the other homicide victims The Dallas Morning News is profiling this year, Sip’s life story is much bigger than the scant facts surrounding his death.
The Goodins raised Sip and his younger brother, Jeron, in the suburbs, as far as possible from what the parents refer to as “the problems in an urban environment.”
Sip was a baseball player, Boy Scout and acolyte at Hamilton Park United Methodist Church. He excelled as a soloist in the church choir and a trombone player in his junior high band.
Pam and Andrew didn’t fully realize Sip’s knack for making beats until they watched him in a campus talent show. “The kids went crazy when he performed,” Pam said. “We looked at each other and said, ‘Sip knows how to sing, so why is he rapping?’”
After graduating from Newman Smith High School, Sip attended Tyler Junior College where, Andrew said, he was mostly interested in having a good time. One weekend he and three friends drove home despite his parents telling him not to make the trip.
As soon as they arrived in Carrollton, Andrew told them to get back in the car — and he slid in as well. No one uttered a word all the way back to Tyler. “We got there and I said, ‘Take care of yourself,’” Andrew recalled. “I took the keys and drove back.” Once the parents felt Sip had learned a valuable lesson, they returned the car to him.
Sip left school to join the Navy only to discover his asthma would delay basic training. He shifted gears again and worked in the restaurant industry while getting his certification as a massage therapist. He liked the flexibility it gave him to do music.
Performing under the entertainment name “Icewater,” Sip had a following at several small venues and made his songs available online.
During a car ride to a family reunion in Alabama, Sip was determined for Pam to listen to his music. “I kept saying, ‘No, I don’t want to hear that.’ But of course because he’s persistent, we listened.”
The Goodins are big on family gatherings, all of which begin and end with prayer. “Sip brought the energy,” Andrew said, whether to Addison’s Fourth of July Kaboom Town, a Marriott Hotels buffet after Easter services or summer vacation in Panama.
In November, Sip moved from a downtown complex to the Royal Lane-Abrams Road area of Dallas to live in an apartment he had previously used as a recording studio.
“It felt like a dangerous complex in a dangerous neighborhood,” Andrew said, and the Goodins thought he was placing his trust in people of questionable character.
Just before Sip was shot to death about 7 p.m. that Thursday night in April, police say two men and a woman knocked on his door. The woman entered the apartment, and when she emerged several minutes later, an argument ensued. Property was taken, Sip was shot and the three fled, according to an arrest affidavit.
Witnesses told detectives the three tried to leave in a 2016 Kia, but the vehicle wouldn’t start. Surveillance video caught them running past a nearby shopping center.
Several glass jars and small plastic bags containing a green leafy substance and unidentified pills were found in Sip’s apartment, according to police. One glass jar, pills and a bag of marijuana were found inside the Kia.
Police have arrested Jayrein Garrett, 30, Jakylon Willingham, 22, and a woman identified by police as his girlfriend, Dezmon Looney, 19. They each face a capital murder charge.
More than 200 people attended an April 20 celebration of Sip’s life: The dentist who put Sip’s braces on when he was an adolescent. Family members from across the country. Men who told Pam and Andrew stories of how Sip had given them a hand up when they needed it.
Delivering the eulogy was Hamilton Park interim Rev. Henry Masters — the same pastor who baptized the Goodins in 1988 after 10-year-old Sip led the family from their pew to the altar.
Among the family and friends who spoke was Garry Commiato, accompanied by three other men who worked with Sip in the massage business for more than a decade. “Sip wrote the book on touching people’s lives,” Garry said. “The people he did massage therapy with, the people he did his music with.”
Brandis Cooper, a close friend for 30 years, said she and Sip talked daily. “I was his biggest fan, the one yelling in the background,” Brandis said. “Scypion, you lived your life with such grace and kindness, caring for others wholeheartedly.”
The Goodins say their strength comes from the word of God, gospel music, meditation and daily devotionals. They also feel the power of the many prayer warriors with them in spirit from Alabama to California.
Sip’s parents are grateful the suspects have been arrested. But “nothing has changed,” Pam said. “It doesn’t bring Scypion back. Now four families are devastated because of those actions.”
This story, originally published in The Dallas Morning News, is reprinted as part of a collaborative partnership between The Dallas Morning News and Texas Metro News. The partnership seeks to boost coverage of Dallas’ communities of color, particularly in southern Dallas.
