Jeremiah Baker was a 17-year-old Black male whose life was cut short by gunfire on the evening of June 12, 2022, in Rochester, New York. Baker lived at the Harriet Tubman Estates apartment complex on William Warfield Drive in the city’s Upper Falls neighborhood and was a student in the Rochester City School District’s Youth and Justice Program. Shortly after 7:30 p.m., he was outside near the intersection of William Warfield Drive and Robert Warfield Court, close to Upper Falls Boulevard.
He had his bicycle with him and was near a basketball hoop in the apartment complex parking lot, where several children were playing basketball.
Gunfire suddenly broke out, and Baker was struck at least once in the upper body. The children who had been playing nearby escaped injury. Rochester police officers responding to the shooting found Baker critically wounded and immediately began lifesaving efforts. An ambulance rushed him to Strong Memorial Hospital, but his injuries proved fatal and he was pronounced dead shortly after arriving. From the early stages of the investigation, detectives said the circumstances indicated that Baker had been deliberately targeted rather than struck by random or indiscriminate gunfire.
People in the neighborhood rushed to Baker’s aid before and as emergency personnel arrived. Ledibel Rivera, who had been visiting a friend in the area, later described hearing noises she initially thought were fireworks and then seeing children running. She found Baker lying on the ground and began performing CPR while another person applied pressure to his gunshot wound. Rivera continued chest compressions and called Baker by name as she tried to keep him responsive. Despite those efforts and the subsequent treatment by police, paramedics and hospital personnel, he could not be saved. A memorial was later established near the place where he had been shot, and neighbors described the killing as especially painful because Baker was a familiar presence in the apartment community.
The shooting also brought a public response from the Rochester City School District. District officials confirmed that Baker was a student and expressed grief over losing another young person to gun violence. His death came amid a period of serious violence involving young people in Rochester, and police emphasized that children had been only feet away when the shooting occurred. At the time, investigators did not announce a motive beyond their conclusion that Baker appeared to have been the intended target, and no suspect was immediately identified or arrested.
The case remained unsolved as the months passed. In December 2022, family and friends returned to William Warfield Drive for a gathering marking what would have been Baker’s 18th birthday. That memorial event itself was disrupted by another eruption of gunfire. Three people, including girls who were 12 and 16 and a 20-year-old man, were wounded. Police said at the time that no one was in custody either for that shooting or for Baker’s June killing. Authorities did not publicly establish that the later shooting was committed by the same person or people responsible for Baker’s death.
Investigators renewed their efforts to develop leads in Baker’s homicide. In September 2023, Rochester police released an image of a person of interest and asked the public to help identify that individual. Police continued to describe Baker as having been on his bicycle near his home when he was killed and reiterated their belief that he had been targeted. The designation of a person of interest did not mean the individual had been formally accused of the murder, and authorities did not announce an arrest or criminal charges stemming from that appeal.
Nearly four years after the killing, Rochester police made another significant public appeal. In May 2026, the department’s Major Crimes Homicide Unit released surveillance images showing two people investigators wanted identified in connection with the case. Police characterized the two as persons of interest and sought the public’s assistance in determining who they were. The renewed appeal recounted that officers had found Baker suffering from a gunshot wound outside Harriet Tubman Estates, attempted to save him and transported him for emergency treatment before he died. Investigators again maintained that he had been the intended target.
As of the most recent publicly available reporting located in 2026, authorities were still seeking information about those two persons of interest and had not announced that either had been identified as the shooter. No arrest, murder charge, trial or conviction in Baker’s killing was reported. The fact that Rochester police were still circulating surveillance material and asking the public to identify people connected to the scene nearly four years later indicates that the homicide remained an active and unresolved Major Crimes investigation. The two people shown by police should therefore be regarded only as persons of interest unless authorities subsequently identify a suspect or bring criminal charges; publicly available reporting did not establish that either person committed the shooting.
