Kevin Harris, a 49-year-old Black/African American male, died in Wilmington, Delaware, in the early hours of July 4, 2024, after a shooting in the area of North Lombard Street and East 10th Street. Police responded around 1:07 a.m. to the 900 block of North Lombard Street after reports of a shooting and found Harris wounded. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The case unfolded on a porch, where Harris had been sitting before an altercation broke out between him and Bernard Stewart, a
Wilmington man in his early seventies. Authorities later said Stewart felt threatened because of a previous altercation with Harris. During the confrontation, Stewart shot Harris once in the head with a shotgun, turning a dispute into a fatal encounter on the Fourth of July.
Wilmington Police took Bernard Stewart into custody without incident on July 4, initially on firearms-related charges. Detective Justin Kane of the Wilmington Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Division was assigned to the case, and the investigation led police to identify Stewart as the suspect in Harris’s death. Stewart was later arraigned on additional charges on July 10, including first-degree murder, possession of a deadly weapon during the commission of a felony, and two counts of possession of a firearm by a person prohibited. He was held at the Howard R. Young Correctional Institution on $1,020,000 cash-only bail.
The case later moved from the original murder charge toward a guilty plea. On March 14, 2025, Bernard Stewart pleaded guilty to manslaughter and possession of a destructive weapon in connection with Harris’s death. Delaware officials described the shooting as a preventable tragedy that grew out of a temporary dispute, and Wilmington Police credited the quick work of responding officers and investigators with making the arrest and moving the case toward accountability.
