Langdon Strickland, a 33-year-old Black man from Chattanooga, Tennessee, was shot on the 500 block of South Kelly Street on the afternoon of August 14, 2017. When Chattanooga police and medics arrived, he was suffering from a gunshot wound serious enough that officers described it as life-threatening, and he was rushed to a hospital as investigators began working the scene for answers.
Neighbors would later describe the violence as sudden and terrifying, the kind that turns an ordinary porch-sitting afternoon into a memory that won’t let go. One witness told investigators she saw a gray Jeep creep up the street, stop, and then erupt in gunfire—so many shots she counted roughly ten or eleven—before the vehicle sped away. Strickland fought for his life in the days that followed, but police later announced he had died from his injuries.
In the weeks after the shooting, the investigation narrowed to a named suspect: Demetrius Delaney Buchanan. Police sought him on a first-degree murder charge and tied additional allegations to the attack, including reckless endangerment and a firearm charge connected to committing a dangerous felony. A warrant was issued as detectives urged anyone who knew where Buchanan was to come forward, making it clear they believed the person responsible wasn’t a mystery anymore—he simply wasn’t in custody yet.
As the search intensified, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation placed Buchanan on its Top 10 Most Wanted list and publicized a reward for information leading to his arrest, warning that he should be considered armed and dangerous. The manhunt turned the case into a statewide bulletin—his name and face circulating far beyond South Kelly Street—while investigators and the victim’s loved ones waited for the moment the chase would end.
That moment came on September 22, 2017, when authorities said Buchanan turned himself in to the U.S. Marshals Service Smoky Mountains Fugitive Task Force in Chattanooga. He was booked into the Hamilton County Jail without bond, facing the murder charge and the related allegations that had followed him through weeks of public appeals and headlines. Public reporting around the case centers on the shooting, the warrant, and Buchanan’s surrender; widely available follow-up coverage does not clearly document a trial outcome or final disposition in the sources reviewed.
