Zykelon Ginger, an 18-year-old Black male from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, was killed on the night of April 1, 2026, after what first looked like a traffic crash quickly unfolded into a double homicide investigation. Just after 8:00 p.m., Pine Bluff police were sent to the area of 14th Avenue and Apple Street for a reported vehicle accident with injuries. Before officers arrived, dispatchers learned that someone in the vehicle had been shot.
When police reached the scene, they found a vehicle in a ditch near the southeast corner of the intersection.
Inside or near that scene, officers found Zykelon suffering from gunshot wounds. Another young man, 19-year-old Otis Tyler, was found nearby as officers continued searching the area. Both victims were taken by ambulance to Jefferson Regional Medical Center, but neither survived. What began as a crash call became a homicide scene, with police also locating other occupants of the vehicle while trying to piece together what had happened in the moments before the shooting and crash.
Investigators soon identified 19-year-old Keshawn Franklin as the suspected shooter. According to police accounts reported afterward, a witness at the scene helped identify him. Franklin was found within about an hour, located behind or near a residence roughly a block from the crime scene, described in one report as only a couple of houses away. He was taken into custody without incident, brought to the detective’s office for questioning, and then booked into the Jefferson County Jail.
Franklin was charged with two counts of capital murder in connection with the deaths of Zykelon Ginger and Otis Tyler. Police said the shooting appeared to be an isolated incident, though they also emphasized that the investigation was still in its early stages and that detectives were continuing to examine the circumstances that led up to the gunfire. Authorities asked anyone with information to contact Pine Bluff police detectives or the department’s tip line.
In the weeks before his death, Pine Bluff police had separately named Zykelon Ginger in a January 2026 aggravated robbery press release involving the alleged theft of speakers during an arranged Facebook Marketplace-style sale. That earlier case was not described in available reports as connected to the April 1 shooting. In the homicide case itself, the public details centered on the crash scene, the two young men fatally wounded, witness cooperation, and the arrest of Keshawn Franklin on capital murder charges.
