Dan Campbell, 32, a Black man, was killed on June 28, 2021 in Manhattan, New York, in a sudden burst of violence outside the Grant Houses on West 125th Street. Near the early evening, as Campbell stepped out of a blue Mercedes-Benz in the neighborhood sometimes described in reports as West Harlem or the Morningside Heights area, gunfire erupted in what police and local reporting characterized as an ambush, with shots coming from a gray vehicle that sped away almost as quickly as it arrived.
A 911 call drew officers to the front of 449 West 125th Street at about 7:24 p.m., within the confines of the 26th Precinct, where Campbell was found suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. Emergency responders rushed Campbell to St. Luke’s Hospital, but the injuries proved fatal and Campbell was pronounced dead there. The first wave of reporting left the scene suspended in unanswered questions, with the shooter’s escape in that gray vehicle and no immediate public account of a motive.
Months later, investigators announced an arrest. Police identified Freddie McGrier, 30, as the suspect and charged McGrier with murder and criminal possession of a weapon in connection with Campbell’s killing. One account of the case noted that McGrier was taken out of federal custody in order to be charged, underscoring that the arrest came through a longer-running investigation rather than a quick resolution at the scene.
Public reporting also described McGrier as someone already familiar to the criminal courts: McGrier had previously been arrested in connection with a 2012 Bronx killing, and later stood trial before being acquitted in 2015, with reporting attributing part of the earlier case’s collapse to key evidence having been destroyed during Hurricane Sandy. In the Grant Houses case, reports placed McGrier living nearby and portrayed the June 28 shooting as deliberate and targeted, though a clear motive was not publicly identified in the contemporaneous coverage. In the sources available from that reporting, the case is described through the arrest and charges, without a publicly documented outcome such as a trial verdict or sentencing.
