Do you know who killed Wejewen Briston Byers and Robert Lee Cooper in 1991? Wejewen Briston Byers was a 16-year-old Black male whose life ended violently in Charlotte, North Carolina, during the early morning hours of June 4, 1991. Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers responding to the area discovered Byers lying in the street near the 3100 block of Poinsett Street. Nearby was another victim, 20-year-old Robert Lee Cooper. Both had suffered apparent gunshot wounds and were deceased when authorities found them.
The discovery immediately presented investigators with a double-homicide investigation. Byers and Cooper were found together at the same location and their deaths were assigned to the same Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department case, indicating that authorities investigated the killings as part of the same incident. Publicly available police information does not describe what the two were doing before the shooting, whether they were attacked at the location where their bodies were discovered, how many shots were fired, or whether witnesses reported seeing the gunman or gunmen. No publicly released motive has been identified.
The circumstances surrounding the shooting have remained largely hidden from public view. The official cold-case summary contains no description of a suspect, vehicle, weapon, argument, robbery, gang connection, or other circumstances that might explain why Byers and Cooper were killed. Authorities have also not publicly identified a person of interest in the case through the material currently available online.
More than three decades after the killings, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police continue to list both Wejewen Briston Byers and Robert Lee Cooper among the department's unsolved homicide cold cases. The department continues to seek information from anyone who may know what happened that morning. Its cold-case material offers a reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to an arrest.
No reliable publicly available source located for the case reports that anyone has been arrested or charged with killing Byers or Cooper, and there is no documented trial or conviction connected with their deaths. As currently listed by Charlotte-Mecklenburg police, the June 4, 1991 double homicide remains unresolved, leaving unanswered the central questions of who shot the two young men and why.
