In the gray light before dawn on June 22, 2025, 17-year-old Darius Washington, a male who is Black/African American, was found shot on Dixon Avenue in west Toledo. Police were dispatched at 5:38 a.m. to 5825 Dixon, where officers discovered Darius Washington suffering from gunshot wounds before medics rushed him to the hospital. He was pronounced dead at Toledo Hospital at 6:27 a.m., and later that day the county coroner ruled his death a homicide, citing multiple gunshot wounds.
The quiet residential stretch near West Alexis Road became a taped-off crime scene as investigators searched for clues in the morning calm. Within hours, authorities issued a news release identifying Darius Washington, 17, as the victim and asking anyone with information to contact Crime Stoppers, underscoring how little was immediately known about the shooter or shooters in the earliest phase of the investigation.
Over the summer, the case shifted as detectives pieced together what they said unfolded that morning. Court records and police affidavits later described a robbery that escalated into the killing of Darius Washington, 17. On September 3, two men—Robert Dorr Jr., 24, and Gage Bearden, 19—were arrested in connection with the June shooting on Dixon Avenue. Days later, police announced they were also seeking a third man, 19-year-old Pete Wheatley, in the same case.
By early October, a Lucas County grand jury had indicted Gage Bearden, Robert Dorr, and Pete Wheatley on multiple charges, including murder, aggravated robbery, robbery, grand theft, and tampering with evidence, all tied to the death of Darius Washington, 17. Reporting at the time described all three as participants in a robbery that resulted in the fatal shooting in west Toledo during the early morning hours of June 22.
Local outlets chronicled the case from the day it broke, noting the location along Dixon Avenue near West Alexis and the early uncertainty about who was responsible. As the investigation advanced, official releases from the Toledo Police Department and the Lucas County Coroner’s Office established the foundational details—time of the call, the victim’s identity and age, and the cause and manner of death—while subsequent arrest reports and indictments mapped how the probe into the killing of Darius Washington, 17, led to named suspects now facing murder and related charges.
