Darrell R. Bacon, a 26-year-old male from Chester, Pennsylvania, was killed in the early morning hours of Sunday, August 8, 2004, in a shooting that local authorities later confirmed was a homicide. His death was first described publicly as the loss of a city man who had been gunned down before dawn, and the ruling from the Delaware County Medical Examiner's Office made clear that Bacon died from multiple gunshot wounds.
Bacon was found outside a house in the 1300 block of Perkins Street
in Chester at about 2:45 a.m. The scene was already grave by the time police and emergency responders were involved, and he was pronounced dead there. The location, a residential block in the city, became the place where a young man's life ended suddenly and violently, adding another name to Chester's toll of gun deaths.
Delaware County Medical Examiner Frederic N. Hellman, M.D., ruled Bacon's death a homicide. At the time, the killing was reported as Chester's eighth homicide of the year and Delaware County's thirteenth, placing his death within a broader stretch of violence affecting the city and county in 2004.
Police released very little about the circumstances of the shooting. The case was said to be under investigation by Chester city Detective Randy Bothwell and Delaware County Detective John Slowik, but the public reporting available online did not describe a motive, the events immediately leading up to the shooting, or whether Bacon had been targeted.
No publicly available online source located identified any suspect or suspects in Darrell Bacon's killing. No arrest, criminal charges, trial, plea, or conviction could be confirmed from the available online source material. The case, as reflected in those sources, remains a homicide marked by limited public information: Bacon was found shot outside a home on Perkins Street, his death was ruled the result of multiple gunshot wounds, and investigators were assigned to pursue answers that were not publicly reported in the sources found.
