Devon Minters (often spelled DeVon Minters) was the father of actress Karrueche Tran, and he died in January 2023 while she was at the Sundance Film Festival. Past that, the reliable public record about him is thin, and a lot of what ranks in search results is padded, guessed, or simply made up.
He never gave interviews. He never had a public career. Nearly everything trustworthy comes from a few things his daughter chose to share over about eight years: a 2015 interview, a 2018 magazine profile, and two Instagram Stories in 2023.
So this piece does one job. It separates what’s confirmed from what’s filler, so you know which details are safe to repeat.
Who Was Devon Minters?
He was a Black, Jamaican American man and the father of Karrueche Tran, who was born in Los Angeles on May 17, 1988. Tran has described herself as half Black and half Vietnamese. In a 2018 interview she brushed off people who questioned her Blackness by pointing out, simply, that her father is Black.
He and Tran’s Vietnamese mother split up when she was young. She didn’t grow up in his house.
But “absent father” is the wrong frame, and it’s one a lot of quick bios get wrong. Tran has said she stayed close to him throughout her life, and her photos with him span decades, from childhood snapshots to adult throwbacks she posted after his death.
One small practical note: his first name shows up as both “Devon” and “DeVon.” Tran’s own posts and most entertainment outlets use “DeVon.” If you’re searching archives, try both.
What Is Actually Confirmed About Him?
Here’s the honest breakdown. Most guides blend all three columns together, which is how myths get started.
| Confirmed (traceable to Tran or major outlets) | Widely repeated, not verified | Not public at all |
|---|---|---|
| He was Karrueche Tran’s father | He worked as a hairstylist | His date of birth |
| He was Black and Jamaican American | He was married to Tran’s mother, reported as Cindy Adamson | His cause of death |
| He didn’t raise her day to day, but they stayed close | He was “around 55” when he died | Any official obituary or funeral details |
| In 2015 Tran said publicly that he was gay | Exact date he passed | Where he lived or worked later in life |
| He died in January 2023; Tran announced it on January 23, 2023 | His net worth (any figure you see is invented) |
That middle column matters. A detail like “hairstylist” appears on dozens of sites, word for word, yet none of them link to an interview or record where it originated. Repetition isn’t confirmation.
How Did Karrueche Tran Talk About Her Dad?
Tran has never said much about her father, and what she did say came in two moments years apart. Both are worth reading carefully, because the details are often flattened.
The 2015 interview that surprised fans
In June 2015, Tran was 27 and still best known for her on-and-off relationship with singer Chris Brown. During an interview with MadameNoire, she offered something personal that few people expected: “I don’t think I’ve ever told anybody this, but my father is gay.”
She explained that she sensed it as a kid, around middle school, before she fully understood what the word meant. And she was clear that it never changed how she saw him, even if other people looked at him differently.
That was an unusual thing for a young celebrity to volunteer in 2015, the same month the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. It’s a big part of why his name stuck with readers.
What she added three years later
In a June 2018 Complex profile, published around season two of her TNT series Claws, Tran described her father as openly bisexual and in a relationship with a male partner. The same piece noted she hadn’t lived with him growing up but had kept a close relationship with him.
Notice the shift in wording between 2015 and 2018. That’s normal. People describe family members differently over time, and he never spoke publicly to define himself. The respectful approach is to report what she said, with the year attached, and not pick a label for him.
What Happened at Sundance in January 2023?
This is the part of the story most people find him through.
In January 2023, Tran was in Park City, Utah, for the Sundance premiere of Divinity, a black-and-white sci-fi film directed by Eddie Alcazar and executive produced by Steven Soderbergh. She co-starred alongside Stephen Dorff, Bella Thorne, and Scott Bakula. For an actress who started out in reality-adjacent tabloid coverage, a Sundance premiere was a genuine career milestone.
Here’s how the timeline played out, based on her own posts:
- About a week before January 23: Tran received the phone call she later said she had always dreaded.
- January 21, 2023: Divinity premiered at the Egyptian Theatre in Park City.
- January 23, 2023: She shared the news in Instagram Stories. She wrote that the past seven days had been hard, that she’d had to make decisions she wasn’t ready for, and that she was trying to celebrate something she had prayed for while hurting.
- Same day: She posted a throwback photo of the two of them with a short farewell, wishing him rest in paradise.
She was 34.
What she didn’t share: how he died, his exact age, or what those decisions were. That’s her right. If a website states a cause of death with confidence, ask yourself where it could possibly have gotten it.
It’s also worth sitting with what she described for a second. Promoting a film, walking a premiere, doing press, all while grieving. Plenty of readers who’ve lost a parent during a big life moment (a graduation, a wedding, a new job) recognized that feeling immediately, which is part of why the posts spread so widely.
Who Raised Karrueche Tran, and Where Did Her Name Come From?
Tran’s family setup was more layered than “mom and dad split up.” Based on her interviews, here’s who was in the picture:
- Her mother: Vietnamese, and Tran’s primary parent. She is widely reported as Cindy Adamson, though Tran rarely names her publicly.
- Her godmother: A Jamaican woman who helped raise her from birth. Tran has treated her as a second mother.
- Her stepfather: Her mother later married an Englishman.
- Her half-brother: Her mother’s son, about ten years younger than Tran.
- Her father: Living separately, but close to her.
So picture a kid in Los Angeles growing up across Vietnamese, Jamaican, African American, and English family traditions. Tran has said that mix made her more open to other cultures, and you can hear it in how matter-of-fact she was about her father in 2015.
The name is its own small story. According to the 2018 Complex profile, “Karrueche” was invented by her parents together. It isn’t a traditional Vietnamese or Jamaican name. It’s theirs.
As for why she isn’t “Karrueche Minters”: she uses Tran, a common Vietnamese surname, from her mother’s side. Lots of kids raised mainly by one parent carry that parent’s name, so there’s nothing mysterious here, despite how many articles treat it as a riddle.
Which Online Stories About Him Are Wrong?
This is the section most guides skip, and it’s the most useful one. Because there’s so little real information, low-quality sites fill the gap with guesses, and sometimes with a completely different person.
The “Kentucky linebacker” story
One widely scraped page claims a 22-year-old named Devon Minters played linebacker at the University of Kentucky, signed with the Tennessee Titans as an undrafted free agent in 2022, and was charged with murder that December.
I checked Kentucky football’s draft and undrafted-signing coverage and the Titans’ own undrafted signing announcements. No player by that name appears. The article reads like auto-generated filler built around a search term. Ignore it, and definitely don’t connect it to Tran’s father.
The “consulting CEO” bio
Another page, dating back to around 2023, describes him as a well-known entrepreneur, author, and founder of “Minters Consulting Group,” complete with sections on net worth, height, and weight. There’s no sign this company or career exists. It’s a generic celebrity-bio template with a name dropped in.
Rule of thumb: when a private person’s bio includes exact height and weight, it was almost certainly written by someone who never had that information.
The hairstylist claim
This one is more stubborn because it might be true. It’s repeated on nearly every recent bio. But I couldn’t trace it to anything Tran said or any record.
My hunch, and it’s only a hunch: it may be bleeding over from Tran’s own early career. Before acting, she worked in retail fashion and then as a freelance stylist for celebrities. Styling runs in the story, so it’s easy for a careless writer to attach it to the wrong family member. Treat “hairstylist” as unconfirmed.
The brother’s surname
At least one site calls Tran’s younger brother “Raymond Minters” and describes him as her father’s son. That contradicts what Tran herself has said: her younger brother is her mother’s son, with her English stepfather. He’s widely reported as Raymond Adamson. Small error, but it shows how little fact-checking goes into these pages.
How Can You Check a Celebrity-Parent Bio Yourself?
If you write about public figures’ families, or you just want to know what’s real, this takes about ten minutes:
- Trace every fact to a first-person source. For a private parent, that usually means the celebrity’s own interview or post. If you can’t find one, the fact is unverified.
- Attach a year to every quote. Tran’s 2015 and 2018 descriptions of her father differ. Both are accurate for when she said them.
- Search a suspicious sentence in quotes. If “around 55 years old” shows up identically on 20 sites with no citation, you’ve found a copy chain, not a source.
- Distrust precise numbers about private people. Net worth, height, weight, and exact birthdays are the most commonly invented fields.
- Check for name collisions. “Devon” is a common first name. A different person with the same name (or an invented one) can easily get merged in.
- Prefer outlets with bylines and editors. A named magazine profile beats an unsigned page with 14 FAQ entries at the bottom.
Run the claims in this article through that list, and you’ll see why the “confirmed” column above is so short.
Why Do People Still Search for Him?
Mostly because his daughter’s profile keeps rising. Tran played Virginia Loc on Claws from 2017 to 2022. Her role on the digital soap The Bay earned her a Daytime Emmy in 2020, making her the first Asian American lead actress to win in that category. In 2023 she joined MTV’s Ridiculousness as a co-host.
Every new milestone sends a fresh wave of readers to her background. And the family details she shared, a gay father she loved openly and a mixed-heritage upbringing, still resonate with people who grew up in similar homes.
The best way to honor someone who lived privately is to stick to what the people who loved him chose to say, and to leave the rest alone.
6. FAQ
Who was Devon Minters? He was the father of actress Karrueche Tran, a Black, Jamaican American man who lived a private life outside the entertainment industry. He died in January 2023. Most of what’s known about him comes from Tran’s own interviews and social posts.
When did Karrueche Tran’s father die? He died in January 2023. Tran announced it in Instagram Stories on January 23, 2023, two days after her film Divinity premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. She said she had received the call about a week earlier.
What was his cause of death? It has never been made public. Tran didn’t share it, and no official obituary has surfaced. Any site naming a specific cause is guessing.
Was Karrueche Tran’s father gay? In a 2015 MadameNoire interview, Tran said her father was gay and that she’d sensed it since around middle school. In a 2018 Complex profile, he was described as openly bisexual and in a relationship with a man. He never spoke publicly about it himself.
Why doesn’t Karrueche Tran use the last name Minters? She uses Tran, a Vietnamese surname from her mother’s side. Her parents separated when she was young, and she was raised mainly by her mother and her Jamaican godmother, so carrying her mother’s family name is a natural fit.
Did he play in the NFL? No. A widely copied article about a Kentucky linebacker with the same name has no support in Kentucky football or Tennessee Titans signing records. It appears to be fabricated and has nothing to do with Tran’s father.
7. Conclusion
He was a private man whose story reached the public only through his daughter’s words, and that’s exactly where the reliable information stops. If you remember one thing, make it this: before you repeat any detail about him, check whether Karrueche Tran actually said it. If she didn’t, it probably isn’t known.
