In the early hours of March 21, 2022, police in New Orleans, Louisiana, responded to a call just after 3 a.m. at an apartment complex in the 4100 block of Encampment Street. Inside, they discovered a tragic scene: three people had been shot to death. One of the victims was Nehemiah Jones, a 24-year-old Black man. The others were identified by the Orleans Parish Coroner's Office as 21-year-old Amya Cornin and 27-year-old Darrin Williams.
All three were pronounced dead at the scene from gunshot wounds.
The investigation would later reveal the brutal sequence of events as laid out by prosecutors. Two armed individuals climbed through a window into the apartment. One of them, later identified as Tyrone Steele, began shooting. The primary target was Darrin Williams, who was asleep on the living room sofa. Steele had been in a shootout with Williams weeks earlier and sought revenge. After Williams was shot, a light came on in a bedroom. The gunman then shot and killed Nehemiah Jones and Amya Cornin, who did not know their attacker. They were later found holding each other beside the bed.
New Orleans police detectives quickly identified Tyrone Steele, then 18 years old, as a suspect. Members of the NOPD's Special Operations Division arrested him on March 30, 2022. The case against him was built on several key pieces of evidence. Ballistic testing matched bullet casings from the prior shootout between Steele and Williams to the casings found at the triple homicide. Investigators also tied Steele to an Instagram account that posted details about the killings that had not been made public, including a boast that used the victims' nicknames.
Steele was also charged in the murder of 20-year-old Shane Brown, which occurred five days after the Encampment Street killings. In March 2024, Steele, by then 20 years old, stood trial. Prosecutors presented evidence from what they described as a brutal murder spree, while the defense argued that critical pieces of the puzzle were missing. On March 7, 2024, an Orleans Parish jury found Tyrone Steele guilty of three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Nehemiah Jones, Amya Cornin, and Darrin Williams. He was also convicted of second-degree murder for killing Shane Brown.
On March 18, 2024, Judge Benedict Willard sentenced Tyrone Steele to four consecutive life sentences, plus an additional 70 years in prison. The sentence brought the legal proceedings in the case to a close.
