Carla Aiken, 56, a Black/African American woman, was killed on October 12, 2021, in Wilmington, Delaware, after gunfire erupted outside a home on the 1000 block of Kirkwood Street. The shooting happened around 9:50 p.m. on a Tuesday night, in a place where she should have been safe: sitting on the front porch, spending an ordinary evening near the people who loved her.
When Wilmington police arrived, they found Carla suffering from gunshot wounds.
She was taken to a hospital, but she did not survive her injuries. Her longtime partner, Roger Morgan, described the scene with grief and shock, saying she had been shot in the side and chest. He said they had seen violence nearby before, but this time it came directly to their home.
Carla was described publicly as a mother of four, and her death left her family trying to understand why someone would open fire on her while she was simply outside. Morgan, who had been her partner for about 25 years, spoke of the killing as a senseless intrusion into their life together, questioning why death had come to their doorstep.
Police identified Carla as the victim shortly after the shooting and said they were investigating the case as a fatal shooting. Public reports from the days after her death said investigators were trying to track down the gunman. No suspect name, arrest, charges, trial, or conviction was found in the available online reporting reviewed for this synopsis. The case was publicly described as unsolved at the time of those reports, with the shooter still at large.
