Dana Lee Hopkins was a 35-year-old man from Raleigh, North Carolina. On the night he was killed, he was working as a bouncer at a party inside a rental hall.
Late on Friday, June 7, 2019, a fight broke out at the event. Hopkins attempted to intervene and break up the confrontation. During the altercation, gunfire erupted. Around 11:30 p.m., Raleigh police officers responded to a shooting call in the 3600 block of Capital Boulevard. They arrived to find Hopkins suffering from a gunshot wound. He was rushed to WakeMed for treatment, but he died from his injuries on the morning of Saturday, June 8, 2019. Two other people were also shot in the incident; they arrived at the same hospital shortly after in a private vehicle.
The investigation led to an arrest the day after the shooting. Police charged 20-year-old Taelyn Ladarius Jiggetts with murder, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury, and possession of a firearm by a felon.
He was taken to the Wake County jail and held without bond.
The case saw another major development over a year later. On December 14, 2020, Raleigh police announced a second arrest in connection with Hopkins’s death. Julius Lamonte Curtis, age 20, was taken into custody and charged with murder and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury. He was also held without bail. As of the arrest of the second suspect in December 2020, two men had been charged in the killing of Dana Hopkins.
