On the evening of October 21, 2015, Rahdel D. Carson, a 29-year-old African-American man, was fatally shot in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The shooting occurred at approximately 9:15 p.m. near the intersection of North 53rd Street and West Nash Street, in the 3600 block of North 53rd Street. Carson was one of two people struck by gunfire when an unidentified man opened fire.
The violence claimed Carson's life and left another individual wounded.
According to Milwaukee police, Carson and a 27-year-old man were in the area when the gunman began shooting. Both were struck, but their injuries had different outcomes. Carson died from his wounds, while the surviving victim was expected to recover. Investigators initially reported that the circumstances surrounding the shooting were not entirely clear, although they believed the violence may have originated from a drug transaction. Authorities did not publicly establish the precise sequence of events leading up to the gunfire or explain what role, if any, either victim may have had in the suspected transaction.
FOX6 Milwaukee
+1
Carson's killing occurred during an especially violent evening in Milwaukee. Approximately 25 minutes earlier, at 8:50 p.m., police had responded to another double shooting near North 27th Street and West Juneau Avenue. In that incident, 36-year-old Terry Dotson was killed, and a 48-year-old woman was wounded. Investigators believed that shooting followed an argument between two men that escalated when one produced a firearm and fired several shots. The wounded woman was reportedly not involved in the confrontation. Although the two homicides occurred within a short period, police treated them as separate incidents, and available reporting did not establish a connection between the killings.
As detectives investigated Carson's death, the possibility of a drug-related confrontation remained an early theory rather than a confirmed motive. Police reported that a man had opened fire on the two victims, but the initial public accounts did not provide a description of the gunman, identify a suspect, or establish whether the shooting had been planned or resulted from a sudden dispute. The surviving victim represented a potentially important source of information, although publicly available reporting did not disclose what he may have witnessed or told investigators.
The investigation into Carson's homicide did not produce a publicly documented arrest or prosecution in the sources located. No individual could be verified as having been formally charged, tried, or convicted in connection with his death. Likewise, no subsequent public report was found establishing the identity of the shooter or confirming the suspected motive. These gaps in available reporting do not establish that investigators failed to develop additional evidence, only that a definitive resolution could not be independently verified.
Carson's death became another tragedy in a year marked by a sharp increase in gun violence across Milwaukee. At the time of the October shootings, the city had recorded approximately 123 homicides, compared with 86 during all of 2014. His killing, along with the injury of the second victim, illustrated the devastating consequences of a violent encounter that unfolded within moments. More than a decade later, the publicly available account of Carson's final evening remains incomplete, with the identity of the person responsible and the ultimate outcome of the homicide investigation unconfirmed.
