Do you know who killed Michael Young? Michael Young, 30, a Black man from New Orleans, Louisiana, was found fatally wounded on January 9, 2014, after officers were dispatched to the 4500 block of South Robertson Street in response to a report of a person down. When police arrived, they discovered he had been shot multiple times, and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
In the days that followed, the Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office confirmed that gunshot-related injuries caused his death, turning what began as an urgent
call for help into a homicide investigation that would linger for years. The case sat in the long, quiet space where witnesses move away, memories dull, and answers seem to slip further out of reach—until detectives reopened the trail and began working it again as a cold case.
A decade later, that renewed push produced a major development. On September 16, 2024, investigators with the New Orleans Police Department’s Homicide Section Cold Case Unit obtained an arrest warrant for Gordon Lewis on one count of second-degree murder in connection with Young’s killing.
Police said Lewis was already being held in Louisiana Department of Corrections custody in DeQuincy on unrelated charges, and that he would be extradited to Orleans Parish to face the murder charge. Authorities emphasized that the case remained subject to the courts, with the usual presumption of innocence as the legal process moves forward.
