Shakanah China, a 13-year-old African American girl, tragically lost her life on May 10, 2011, in Durham, North Carolina. Shakanah was playing outside a home at 7 Atka Court when someone fired several shots from a passing van. She was hit in the stomach and succumbed to her injuries at Duke University Hospital. Shakanah was a seventh-grader at Lakeview School in Durham.
The investigation into Shakanah's death led to the arrest of two men, Levette Lipscomb and Brandon Townsend, about a
year after the incident. Lipscomb, of North Briggs Avenue, was charged with first-degree murder but later pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter. He was sentenced to three to five years in prison, with credit for the three-and-a-half years he had already spent in jail. The delay in the delivery of DNA evidence led authorities to drop the murder charge against Townsend, and his case was eventually dismissed due to a violation of his right to a speedy trial.
The case against Lipscomb and Townsend was based on the word of a confidential police informant who claimed to have seen Townsend get into a van shortly before the shooting and return in a van shortly thereafter. However, no eyewitnesses placed Townsend at the scene, and the DNA evidence collected from the van was never tested. The delays in obtaining and testing the DNA evidence violated Townsend's constitutional rights, leading to the dismissal of the charges against him.
Shakanah's family, including her mother Demetriss China and grandmother Diane Billings, were devastated by her loss. Despite the arrests and subsequent legal proceedings, they felt that justice was never fully served for the death of their beloved 13-year-old girl.
