DeMonyae Zaire Phelps, a 19-year-old Black male from Peoria, Illinois, was discovered late on the night of July 20, 2021, in a car that had rolled to a stop along the 300 block of South Shelley Street. Officers responding around 11:45 p.m. found the vehicle still running and Phelps slumped over the center console with multiple gunshot wounds, and despite immediate life-saving efforts, he was pronounced dead at the scene. An autopsy would later note that he suffered multiple wounds and died instantly. Investigators recovered six spent rifle casings at the scene, a stark trail of metal that hinted at the violence that had unfolded in the dark on the city's South Side.
In the weeks and months that followed, a picture emerged of a fatal encounter rooted in a small dispute over money that spiraled into irrevocable harm. Witness accounts and physical evidence led detectives to focus on Marvin A. Alexander, who, according to subsequent public records, was taken into custody and charged with first-degree murder. The case moved through indictments and pretrial proceedings, eventually culminating in a Peoria County jury trial.
More than four years after the shooting, jurors found Alexander guilty of first-degree murder, accepting the prosecution's account that Phelps was shot three times in the chest during a dispute over just seventy dollars. The verdict, returned on October 29, 2025, affirmed the investigative narrative built from the rifle casings, the condition of the car, and the testimony describing the brief, fatal confrontation. Sentencing was set to follow, bringing a formal end to the courtroom chapter of a case that began with the discovery of a still-running car on a South Peoria street and the loss of a young life just beginning.
