In the autumn of 2020, a life was abruptly cut short on a Nashville interstate, leaving a family to mourn and a community to question the senselessness of the violence. D'andre Whitley, a 22-year-old male, was fatally shot on the evening of Monday, October 5, 2020. The investigation that followed would reveal a story of targeted violence, apparently a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That evening, Whitley was a passenger in a black Mazda sedan, having just left a motel
on Brick Church Pike. As the vehicle traveled near the junction of I-24 and I-65, gunfire erupted. Whitley was struck, and the car he was in subsequently lost control, exiting at Rosa L. Parks Boulevard and crashing in the 1600 block. Though police and paramedics rendered aid at the scene, D'andre Whitley succumbed to his injuries there. From the outset, detectives believed the shooting was not a random act of violence, but that Whitley had been specifically targeted after leaving the motel.
The investigation into Whitley's death progressed, and just under two months later, authorities made an arrest. On December 2, 2020, the Metro Nashville Police Department announced that 19-year-old Kevon Mayberry had been indicted on a charge of first-degree murder for the shooting of D'andre Whitley. Investigators determined that the motive was retaliation for a previous altercation. Tragically, it appears Whitley was not involved in the initial dispute but was instead a friend of the intended target. At the time of the murder, Mayberry was on a 10-year probated sentence for the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old in 2018, an incident that occurred when Mayberry himself was 16. He was already in jail on a probation violation when he was served with the murder indictment.
