Late on Wednesday, May 29, 2019, Nelson Gregory Goff, a 19-year-old male from New Bern, North Carolina, was critically wounded in a shooting in a residential area along Poplar Street near Oaks Road. New Bern police were dispatched to the area at approximately 11:56 p.m. After officers arrived, Goff was transported from the scene and airlifted to Vidant Medical Center for emergency treatment.
Early reports did not disclose the extent of his injuries, and investigators immediately began trying to determine what had led to the gunfire.
Although some online memorial records list May 29 as the date Goff was lost to gun violence, the contemporaneous local news report based on information from New Bern officials indicates that May 29 was the date of the shooting. Police later confirmed that Goff remained hospitalized and died at Vidant Medical Center the following Saturday as a result of the injuries he suffered in the shooting. He was formally identified by the New Bern Police Department after his death.
The shooting became a homicide investigation identified in New Bern Police Department records as case 2019-18530, described specifically as the “Poplar Street Homicide.” The investigation continued well beyond the immediate aftermath. In the department's June 2019 reporting, detectives listed the case as pending interviews. A subsequent report showed investigators waiting for search-warrant results, indicating that detectives were actively pursuing evidence rather than treating the investigation as exhausted.
Police records also referred to another assault investigation associated with the Poplar Street case. That investigation, case 2019-20929, was at one point awaiting search-warrant results and was later described as a Simmons Street shooting in which a warrant had been served. The publicly available departmental reports, however, do not identify the individual connected to that warrant as Goff's killer and do not establish that an arrest in the associated assault case resolved his homicide. A separate later shooting at 204 Poplar Street was also recorded under a different case number and resulted in an arrest, but that incident was distinct from Goff's homicide.
As the months passed, Goff's homicide remained among the department's notable open investigations. Police reporting for later in 2019 continued to describe case 2019-18530 as pending interviews. By January 2020, the New Bern Police Department was still listing the Poplar Street homicide as pending interviews rather than reporting that the case had been closed through an arrest. The publicly available police reports located for the case do not name a suspect, announce a murder charge, or document a prosecution, trial, or conviction connected specifically to Goff's death.
Goff was remembered online by people close to him as “Nelly.” One longtime friend described him as funny, kind and genuine and remembered his strong love for his mother and family. Those memories stand alongside the police record of an investigation that continued for months after the shooting, with detectives pursuing interviews and search-warrant evidence but with no publicly documented arrest or conviction in the homicide in the sources located.
