In the summer of 2010, the East Side of Detroit, Michigan, was the setting for a series of tragic events that claimed the lives of several young people in quick succession. Among them was Chaise Sherrors, an African American male who was 17 years old at the time of his death. A student at Southeastern High School, he was known in his neighborhood for his skill with electric clippers and his ambition to one day open his own barbershop.
He was also the best friend of Je'Rean Blake, a teenager whose murder just weeks earlier had sparked a controversial police raid that resulted in the death of a seven-year-old girl, Aiyana Stanley-Jones.
On July 11, 2010, the violence that had already touched his inner circle found Chaise Sherrors on the front porch of a home on Haverhill Street. He was in the middle of cutting a friend's hair, a common favor he performed for those in the community, when gunfire erupted nearby. He was struck by a stray bullet, becoming an innocent bystander in a city struggling with a high homicide rate. In a haunting turn of events reported by journalists covering the area, the electric clippers he had been using were mysteriously returned to his front porch the following morning, wiped clean and free of hair.
Unlike the high-profile investigation into the death of his best friend Je'Rean Blake, which saw the arrest and conviction of Chauncey Owens, the killing of Chaise Sherrors did not result in a similarly swift resolution. Public records and investigative reports from the time list his case among the thousands of unsolved homicides in Detroit. There are no available records indicating that a specific suspect was arrested, charged, or convicted for the murder of Chaise Sherrors. His death became part of what local residents and reporters described as the "silent suffering" of the community, leaving his mother, Britta McNeal, to place his urn on her mantel alongside that of her younger son, who had also been killed by gunfire the previous year.
