Deshaun Parks

DeShawn Parks, a 17-year-old Black male, was killed in Detroit, Michigan, in the first minutes of Friday, April 1, 2011. At about 12:35 a.m., he was walking along the 17800 block of Dresden when two armed suspects confronted him, forced the encounter into a robbery, and then fatally shot him before taking off into the night.

What’s publicly described is stark and swift: a walk interrupted, two guns, a robbery, and gunfire that ended his life on that block. The details that might explai ...