On the evening of August 25, 2020, law enforcement officers in Kansas City, Missouri, were dispatched to the East Bottoms neighborhood following reports of gunfire. Around 8:00 p.m., responders arrived at the 2700 block of Guinotte Avenue, where they located a gold Honda stopped in the street. Inside the vehicle, they discovered two unresponsive individuals suffering from gunshot wounds. Emergency personnel declared both victims deceased at the scene.
One of the victims was identified as 18-year-old male Jahmiere Green, who was found alongside 22-year-old Brandon Rainey.
Homicide detectives initiated an investigation that pieced together the events leading up to the violence through surveillance footage. Video evidence from the area captured a white SUV following the victims' vehicle on Guinotte Avenue just before the shooting. The footage depicted the SUV pulling up to the driver's side of the Honda, after which the victims' car slowed to a halt. Further tracking showed the suspect vehicle returning to a parking lot on East Third Street, where a man matching the physical description of an individual seen meeting with Green earlier that evening exited the SUV. Investigators later obtained a search warrant for the suspect's phone, discovering images of a vehicle with distinctive windshield markings that matched the SUV observed in the security video.
Authorities identified the suspect as Cleon D. White, linking him to the double homicide. In January 2024, a jury in Jackson County found White guilty of two counts of first-degree murder, unlawful use of a weapon, and two counts of armed criminal action. During the sentencing hearing in March 2024, a judge ordered White to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole, with an additional 65 years added to the sentence. Prosecutors noted that this sentence would run consecutively to a separate term White was already serving for an unrelated manslaughter conviction from 2021.
