On the night of April 8, 2022, 17-year-old African American male Kanye Avant Amere Stowers was attending a house party in Bloomington, Illinois, when gunfire burst through the late night air, shattering so many lives at what was to be a celebratory gathering.
Police were dispatched around 11:30 p.m. to the 400 block of East Mill Street for a disturbance; as officers arrived, they heard shots and found the 17-year-old male on the steps of a residence with a gunshot wound, barely clinging to life.
He would not survive; family obituary records list his date of death as April 8, 2022.
Kanye Avant Amere Stowers had been a senior at Richwoods High School in Peoria, remembered as a class clown with a gift for making people laugh and a drive to record music he produced himself.
His cap and gown were already hanging at home, never to be worn; he planned to study psychology after graduation.
His mother, Tomeka Love, would later speak about how quickly those plans were stolen from her 17-year-old son, Kanye Avant Amere Stowers. She faithfully believed “He was gonna be somebody.”
In the immediate aftermath, authorities described a frantic scene near E. Mill Street and asked the public for help.
Early reports noted the victim, Kanye Avant Amere Stowers was pronounced dead at the scene, and in the months that followed Bloomington Police renewed pleas for tips as the investigation stretched on, marking yet another shooting in a year that had already seen multiple homicides.
The timeline placed the shots shortly before midnight, with officers hearing gunfire as they arrived, a detail that would echo through subsequent appeals for information.
A break came more than a year later. On Dec. 20, 2023, a McLean County grand jury indicted a suspect, and on Dec. 27 U.S. Marshals arrested 20-year-old Tomiyale M. Anderson of Hampton, Georgia, in Chicago in connection with the killing of 17-year-old African American male, Kanye Avant Amere Stowers.
Authorities said Anderson faced four counts of murder, along with attempted murder and aggravated discharge of a firearm tied to the party shooting where the visiting 17-year-old victim, Kanye Avant Amere Stowers was struck down and ultimately met an early death on those porch steps right before the midnight bell struck.
In early January 2024, a judge ordered Anderson held in custody pending trial, noting the seriousness of the charges connected to the death of Kanye Avant Amere Stowers.
Coverage of the detention hearing outlined the potential sentencing range on the first-degree murder counts and confirmed the added counts for attempted murder and aggravated discharge, underscoring that the case had moved from a long, anguished search for answers into the courts—while still leaving a grieving family and community to carry the memory of a 17-year-old African American male named, Kanye Avant Amere Stowers; Whose future had been tragically cut short, before it even had a chance to be written.
As of May 21, 2025 Tomiyale M. Anderson, was still awaiting trial for the killing of Kanye Avant Amere Stowers.
No other definitive information is available about the trial out come of, Tomiyale M. Anderson, who stands accused of killing 17 year old, African American male, Kanye Avant Amere Stowers on April 8, 2022, while he sit on the front steps of a house party in Bloomington Illinois.
