Jayda Reed, a 19-year-old Black / African American female, died in Wilmington, Delaware, on July 26, 2021, during a violent night in the city that included multiple separate shootings. Her death unfolded inside a home in the 1100 block of West 2nd Street, near Van Buren Street, where police were called at about 8:23 to 8:25 p.m. after reports that several people had been shot.
When officers arrived, the situation was more than a routine shooting response.
Dispatchers learned that the shooter might still be inside the home, and police began treating the scene as a barricaded-subject incident. After officers entered the building, they found Reed and 30-year-old McKenzie Horn dead from gunshot wounds. A 12-year-old girl had also been shot but survived and was taken to a hospital in stable condition.
Police said the gunman was 32-year-old Robert Horn. He was found dead at the scene from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Investigators described the shooting as domestic in nature, and later reports characterized the case as an apparent murder-suicide. Authorities said Horn shot the two women and the child before turning the gun on himself.
Because Robert Horn died at the scene, there were no arrests, trial proceedings, or convictions connected to Reed's killing. Early reporting on the broader series of Wilmington shootings that night noted that no arrests had been made in the separate incidents, but in Reed's case police identified the suspected shooter as deceased inside the home. Reed's death was part of a devastating span of violence in Wilmington that night, but the West 2nd Street shooting was treated as a domestic-related murder-suicide rather than an unsolved street shooting.
