Trejan Sales, a 20-year-old Black / African American man, was killed just after midnight on June 5, 2020, on Neutral Court on Syracuse’s North Side. Police were called to the scene and found him suffering from a gunshot wound to the head; he was pronounced dead there, in the dark hours when most of the city was asleep and the neighborhood was left to absorb the shock in the streetlight glow.
His death came during a violent stretch that night in Syracuse, with multiple shootings reported within hours—an unsettling rhythm of calls, flashing lights, and investigators moving from block to block as new reports kept coming in. Amid that turmoil, word of Trejan’s killing spread quickly through family and friends, and then through the wider community, where grief mixed with anger and exhaustion over the steady drumbeat of gun violence.
In the days that followed, those who loved him gathered to mourn and to try to make sense of a life ended so abruptly. At his funeral at Tucker Missionary Baptist Church, the pain was raw and public, with relatives speaking about how unreal it felt—like the kind of cruel prank you keep waiting to be revealed as a nightmare you can wake up from. At that point, the family was still pleading for answers and urging anyone with information to come forward, because whoever fired the shot had not yet been caught.
Less than three weeks later, Syracuse police announced an arrest. Edwin Sessoms, 37, was charged with second-degree murder in connection with Trejan Sales’s death, along with a weapons possession charge. Authorities said the shooting happened on Neutral Court on June 5, and Sessoms was held at the Onondaga County jail after the charges were filed, marking a turning point from rumor and fear into the first concrete steps of a prosecution.
