Vincent Malik Witt, a 20-year-old Black male from Staten Island, New York, was killed on April 14, 2020, in the Park Hill section of the borough, on a stretch of Park Hill Avenue that neighbors would later describe as a place split down the middle by what happened. It was just before 4 p.m. when police were called to the area, and he was found outside 225 Park Hill Ave. with a gunshot wound to the head.
He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The loss hit with a particular kind of horror for his father, who has said he was on the phone with his son when the moment unfolded. In that call, he later described hearing the sounds of a scuffle before the line abruptly went dead. He rushed to the block and arrived to a sight that he has said never leaves him: his son lying face down on the pavement where the afternoon should have been ordinary.
As word spread, grief spilled into the open. Friends and neighbors gathered for a vigil near the Park Hill apartments, candles arranged into initials and nicknames, stories traded in low voices and on social media. In those first days, the case was raw and rumor-filled, with people in the neighborhood saying a name out loud even before authorities did: Kyshief Campbell, known by some as “Kaka.” The talk wasn’t just gossip, according to those familiar with the community—it became a fault line, with loyalties hardening and friendships strained as each side insisted it knew the truth.
Over time, the story around the shooting took on a motive in the telling. People close to the victim’s family said the violence was connected to a prior incident in which Campbell had been jumped and robbed, and that Witt—someone who knew people on both sides—was unfairly blamed as if he’d been involved. Law enforcement sources familiar with the case were later quoted describing Witt as a seemingly good kid with no criminal background, a detail that only deepened the sense, among those who loved him, that he’d been pulled into a storm that wasn’t his.
Nearly five years passed with no public resolution, and the silence itself became part of the tragedy—an unsolved killing that sources said left the neighborhood divided long after the memorial candles burned out. Then authorities made an arrest. Kyshief Campbell, 25, was arraigned on charges that include second-degree murder and criminal possession of a firearm in connection with the April 14, 2020 slaying. After hearing arguments from prosecutors and the defense, a judge ordered him held without the option of bail, and the case was adjourned to Dec. 11.
Both families were in the courtroom when the decision came down. Outside afterward, Witt’s father spoke again about what he has been chasing since the day of the shooting—justice—and said he was focused on accountability for what happened to his son. He also said he’d learned Campbell had been taken into custody in Georgia after investigators tracked him down, and that hearing the news lifted a weight he’d carried for years, even as the case now moves into its next, harder chapter: proving in court what so many people in that neighborhood have argued about since the moment the phone call went quiet.
