Terell Martin-Coleman 16, male, Black, was killed in the early hours of August 19, 2016, outside his family’s home on Detroit’s east side. It was the kind of summer night when people still linger on porches and corners, and he was out on Roxbury Street near Casino Avenue—an area close to I-94 and the neighborhood streets that cut toward Cadieux Road.
Police said the gunfire came suddenly from a passing car, a drive-by that shattered the quiet without warning. Accounts described a dark or black sedan pulling up and someone inside opening fire while he stood at the corner with relatives nearby. His mother, Rhonda Martin, later told reporters he had been outside with his brothers when the shots hit, and in the frantic moments that followed, family members rushed him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
As daylight spread across the block, investigators worked the scene and met a frustrating absence of answers. Reports said officers canvassed the neighborhood, but people either hadn’t seen anything or wouldn’t say what they knew. Evidence technicians searched for signs of the shooting, and at least one report noted that no shell casings were found at the location, a detail that only deepened the sense of a crime that arrived and vanished in the same breath.
In the immediate aftermath, authorities said there had been no arrests. Police were looking for two suspects described only as males associated with a black sedan, and they did not release clear descriptions of faces, clothing, or the vehicle’s make and model. The case, as it was publicly described at the time, centered on that brief, violent pass-by—an attack carried out from the concealment of a moving car, leaving a family with grief and investigators with little to hold onto beyond a few seconds of chaos.
