Allen Jerome Cooper Jr., a 17-year-old African American male, was shot and killed on the night of April 26, 2017, in Lancaster, South Carolina. A promising student and athlete at Lancaster High School, Cooper had just finished playing in a community basketball game at the Hope on the Hill Recreation Center on West Meeting Street. As he was leaving the facility around 9:00 p.m., a gunfight erupted in the parking lot.
Police described the incident as a shootout between rival gangs, with shots fired from multiple directions. Cooper, who was not a gang member and was simply an innocent bystander leaving the venue, was struck by a bullet during the crossfire and died at the scene.
In the wake of the shooting, investigators with the Lancaster Police Department, the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office, and the State Law Enforcement Division launched an inquiry into the violence. Authorities linked the atmosphere of violence to another recent homicide in the area, specifically the shooting death of 19-year-old Mar'Quise Deshun Evans, which had occurred weeks earlier on April 11. Police Chief Scott Grant publicly stated that the two shootings were connected by gang activity and that the gunfire that killed Cooper was likely planned rather than a spontaneous event.
Despite the connections drawn between the two cases, the investigation into Cooper’s specific murder did not yield immediate charges. While police successfully arrested and charged four teenagers—Keshawn Cunningham, La'Jameion Hood, Leon Caskey Jr., and an unnamed 15-year-old juvenile—in connection with the murder of Mar'Quise Evans, no suspects were ever formally charged with the murder of Allen Cooper Jr. in the immediate aftermath. The Evans suspects faced charges ranging from murder to accessory before the fact, but these charges were specific to the April 11 incident.
Years later, the killing of Allen Jerome Cooper Jr. remains widely cited as an unsolved tragedy within the community. Although law enforcement officials were confident that the shooting was the result of gang rivalries and urged witnesses to come forward, the specific individual or individuals who fired the fatal shot that ended Cooper's life have not been publicly identified or convicted in a court of law. His death continues to be remembered as a senseless loss of a young "star" with a bright future who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
