White male Ray Alan Adams, age 42, of West Frankfort, Illinois, was caught in a burst of gunfire on the night of July 28, 2015, after 911 calls drew police to a small house at 406 North Madison Street.
Officers arrived to shots being fired, an active-shooter chaos unfolding inside and out, and the grim discovery that two people were already beyond saving while two others, one an adult, the other a juvenile, were wounded and rushed to the hospital.
Witnesses on scene identified the
gunman as 32-year-old Harley Matthew “Matt” Wilder; police said he was found at the house with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
Franklin County Coroner Marty Leffler later pronounced 42-year-old Ray Adams dead at the scene.
The violence broke out around 10 p.m. on July 28; Adams's death was formally recorded just after midnight, at 12:08 a.m. on July 29, aligning the late-night attack with the next day's official time of death.
Through the early morning hours, investigators worked a house littered with spent rounds and heartbreak, piecing together how a summer evening spiraled into tragedy that left two dead and a neighborhood stunned.
Authorities publicly tied the shooting to Wilder, also known as Matthew Wilder, and noted that he died at the scene of a self-inflicted gunshot, leaving no suspect to interrogate and no arrests to be made.
Adams's name, age, and the stark fact of his death traveled quickly through local bulletins and later into memorial notices; listings that track lives lost to gunfire fixed his killing to West Frankfort on July 29, 2015, a permanent entry beside a date that changed a family's history.
