On a tragic afternoon in lower Manhattan, 21-year-old Kevon Langston lost his life in a senseless act of violence. The young man was inside a sixth-floor apartment at the Alfred E. Smith Houses on December 5, 2022, when he was fatally shot. The incident, which occurred around 2:40 p.m., left Langston with multiple gunshot wounds to his legs and chest.
He was rushed to Bellevue Hospital, but tragically succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced dead at 3:36 p.m.
The man identified as the suspect in Langston's death was 28-year-old Sundance Oliver, an ex-convict with a history of violent crimes. Langston was just one of the victims in a violent crime spree that spanned across Brooklyn and Manhattan. Oliver's rampage reportedly began that morning with an attempted robbery in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where a 96-year-old man in a motorized wheelchair was accidentally shot. Following the fatal shooting of Langston in the afternoon, Oliver is believed to have returned to Brooklyn, where he shot and killed a 17-year-old girl in Crown Heights later that night. It is believed that both Langston and the teenage girl were known to Oliver, though a specific motive for the shootings has not been made clear.
Following the string of violent attacks, the New York Police Department launched an extensive manhunt for Oliver, who was considered armed and extremely dangerous. The search concluded when Oliver turned himself in at the 77th Precinct stationhouse in Crown Heights. He was subsequently taken into custody and faced a multitude of charges, including murder, attempted murder, robbery, and criminal possession of a weapon for the series of crimes that left a community in mourning and cut short the lives of two young people.
