On the evening of December 10, 2011, Kevin Drinks, a 50-year-old furniture delivery driver, was shot and killed while sitting in his truck on the 900 block of Watts Street in North Philadelphia. Drinks had been targeted in a case of mistaken identity; the attackers erroneously believed that he was a witness set to testify in a murder trial. The murder was orchestrated by Chad Rannels, who was in custody for another crime at the time, along with his associates Michael Blackston, Semaj Armstead,
and Rashawn Combs. Over several hours, Blackston, Armstead, and Combs tracked Drinks across the city before Blackston ultimately shot him. The crime weapon, believed to be a revolver, was never recovered at the scene, and no shell casings were found, which hindered the investigation early on.
The motive behind the killing was deeply rooted in paranoia and fear of legal consequences. Rannels and his co-conspirators mistakenly thought that Drinks was a witness in the case of Kristen Freeman's murder and feared that his testimony could lead to severe repercussions for Rannels. They surveilled Drinks throughout the day and eventually shot him, thinking this would eliminate a key witness. However, Drinks had no involvement with the Freeman case at all; he was an innocent victim who was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The case remained unsolved for several years. It wasn't until 2017, during an investigation into an unrelated matter, that police began to piece together coded conversations recorded during phone calls from prison, which implicated the four men. Detectives used these phone records and other forms of electronic tracking, including cell site analysis, to connect the dots. This breakthrough eventually led to the arrests and convictions of the individuals involved.
In 2022, more than a decade after the murder, all four men were convicted. Chad Rannels, Michael Blackston, and Semaj Armstead were found guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy, and related charges and were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Rashawn Combs, found guilty of third-degree murder, is facing a sentence of at least 30 years. Kevin Drinks' widow, Keena Drinks, described the ordeal as a painful journey but expressed her gratitude to the detectives and prosecutors who worked tirelessly to bring her husband's killers to justice. She has since become an advocate for victims of crime, emphasizing the importance of persistence in solving cold cases. The family finally received some sense of justice, and they marked the occasion by removing the remembrance pins they had worn for over a decade.
