On the evening of March 26, 2000, 18-year-old female Cara Davenport was sitting in the back seat of a brown 1983 Pontiac parked in a lot at 6156 Greer Avenue in Hillsdale, Missouri. She was accompanied by two male acquaintances, James Rossell and Tyrease Edwards, and the group had planned to head out to a movie. The night was notably warm for early spring, but the evening took a violent turn before they could leave the apartment complex.
As they sat in the vehicle, two unknown individuals approached the car and opened fire. Cara was struck in the head during the ambush and subsequently died from her injuries.
The two men in the car with Cara survived the initial attack, but violence would later claim both of their lives in separate incidents. Six months after Cara’s death, James Rossell was shot and killed in Wellston, a case that also saw no arrests. In 2006, the second survivor, Tyrease Edwards, was fatally shot in Wellston as well. In Edwards' case, a suspect named Travion Williams eventually pleaded guilty to the murder, which authorities believed was connected to a narcotics dispute. Investigators have speculated whether the shooting that killed Cara was linked to the subsequent deaths of the other passengers, but no concrete evidence has definitively tied the cases together in court.
Despite the passage of time, the murder of Cara Davenport remains unsolved. St. Louis County police, including then-Lieutenant Jon Belmar who worked the case, have kept the investigation open, but no suspects have ever been charged with her death. Her mother, Sharon Webb, has spent over two decades advocating for answers and maintains a close relationship with the investigators, yet the individuals responsible for the shooting on that Sunday night in Hillsdale have evaded justice.
