Brandon Lawrence, 30, a Black male from Cincinnati, was shot just after midnight on June 12, 2025, in the 1600 block of Walnut Street in Over-the-Rhine. Officers found him with a gunshot wound around 12:35 a.m. and Cincinnati Fire Department personnel rushed him to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where he died. A second person wounded in the same burst of gunfire went by private vehicle to Christ Hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening.
Police identified the decedent as Brandon Lawrence, 30, and opened a homicide investigation.
Details emerging in court later painted a chaotic scene near Walnut and Corwine, close to a neighborhood gas station. A prosecutor alleged that a 14-year-old boy was driving a stolen car with other teens when an encounter on the street escalated; the cars stopped, and multiple youths allegedly got out and fired a volley of shots—41 in all—striking the area where people gathered on church steps. In the crossfire, Brandon Lawrence, 30, a male, was fatally hit, and an Uber driver was also wounded when a bullet pierced his windshield and struck his shoulder. Surveillance footage was cited as key to identifying a suspect.
Investigators worked the case through the summer. On September 18, Cincinnati Police announced the arrest of a 14-year-old boy in connection with the killing of Brandon Lawrence, 30, a male. Authorities said the homicide investigation remains active, and they did not immediately specify the final set of charges as the juvenile case moved through initial hearings. Police continued to ask anyone with information to contact the Homicide Unit.
As his family prepared services and the city took stock of another life lost, funeral notices marked the passing of Brandon Mark-Keith Lawrence, born in Cincinnati in 1994, with visitation and a service held at House of Hope Fellowship on June 20, 2025. Those memorials threaded together the dates and places left in the wake of violence, while the case against a teenage suspect began its slow movement through the courts.
