Zyitae Britt, a 20-year-old Black / African American male, died on February 12, 2021, in Newark, Delaware, after a quiet winter morning in the Brookside community turned into a homicide investigation. New Castle County police were called to Carlisle Road after someone reported a suspicious vehicle parked in the roadway. When officers arrived, they found a red sedan sitting in the cold, with snow still covering other vehicles nearby, and discovered two young men dead inside.
The victims were later identified as Zyitae Britt and 19-year-old Elijah Covington. Police said both had suffered gunshot wounds. The discovery brought detectives from the New Castle County Division of Police Criminal Investigations Unit to the scene, and authorities quickly described the deaths as homicides. Officials publicly offered condolences to the victims’ families and said investigators were working to identify whoever was responsible for what they called a senseless crime.
As the case developed, it became a double homicide with few public answers. The basic facts remained stark: two young men were found shot to death inside a vehicle in the unit block or area of Carlisle Road in Brookside, near Newark, during the early morning hours of February 12, 2021. Police asked anyone with information, including anyone who might have had video connected to the investigation, to contact Detective Kevin Mackie or the New Castle County Division of Police.
Years later, the case was still being treated as unsolved. In February 2024, the New Castle County Division of Police Cold Case Squad again highlighted the murders of Elijah Covington and Zyitae Britt, saying the investigation remained active. Police repeated that officers had been dispatched around 6:55 a.m. for a suspicious vehicle parked in the roadway, found the victims inside, and determined they had died from gunshot wounds.
No arrests were publicly reported in the available online sources, and no named suspect or suspects were identified. A 2024 report specifically noted that there had been no arrests three years after the double homicide. The public record available online does not show charges, a trial, or a conviction connected to Zyitae Britt’s death. Instead, the case remains a cold case investigation, with detectives continuing to ask for tips from anyone who knows what happened on Carlisle Road that morning.
