Christopher Burkett, a 26-year-old Black/African American male from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was shot on Monday afternoon, January 9, 2017, in the area of 14th and Market streets, outside Harrisburg Fried Chicken. Police found him slumped over in a van with a gunshot wound to the head, and another report said he had suffered multiple gunshot wounds and was initially unresponsive before being taken to Penn State Hershey Medical Center.
Although early information described him as critically injured, he was later pronounced dead on Tuesday, January 10, 2017.
The shooting unfolded in a busy commercial area, close enough that the owner of Harrisburg Fried Chicken reportedly heard the gunfire and came outside to find a chaotic and painful scene. According to WGAL’s account, Burkett’s mother and girlfriend were there and were crying as police and emergency responders handled the aftermath. Police said the shooter was last seen running west on Market Street toward 13th Street, leaving investigators with a public crime scene, surveillance leads, and a grieving family searching for answers.
In the immediate aftermath, police said a suspect had been captured on security footage from Harrisburg Fried Chicken. The description released at the time was of a short Black man with an average build, and Dauphin County Crime Stoppers offered a reward of up to $2,000 for information leading to an arrest. For years, the case appeared to sit unresolved publicly, with investigators continuing to work the homicide beyond the first wave of tips and witness information.
More than three years later, Harrisburg police announced a break in the case. Christian Zimmerman, then 37, was charged in connection with Burkett’s killing after police accused him of shooting Burkett while Burkett sat inside a vehicle parked outside the restaurant on the 1300 block of Market Street. Police said Zimmerman was charged on August 26, 2020, with Burkett’s murder, and a CBS21 social media post described the charge as first-degree murder in the shooting death of Christopher Burkett.
A later public booking record shows Christian D. Zimmerman was booked in Dauphin County on September 5, 2024, on a reported charge of criminal homicide, with the booking record noting that arrest information alone does not imply guilt. The available online sources located for this synopsis show the homicide charge and booking, but they do not show a conviction, trial verdict, sentencing, or punishment in Burkett’s death. Based on the sources found, the publicly available record confirms an arrest/booking and homicide charge tied to the case, but no publicly available conviction or sentence was located.
