Do you know who murdered Devaun Drayton? In the spring of 2004, the life of 17-year-old Devaun Drayton, a promising amateur boxer, was cut short by a single gunshot to the back of his head. The fatal encounter took place on March 10, 2004, behind Phelps High School in Northeast Washington, D.C. Drayton, the son of boxing patriarch Gary Russell Sr. and a Silver Gloves national youth tournament winner, was at a turning point, having navigated a school for troubled youth and preparing to leave for boxing training in Miami. Tragically, he was buried with the plane ticket still in his pocket.
The investigation into Drayton's death eventually revealed a dispute over a firearm as the motive. According to court records, Drayton had borrowed a gun that was supposed to be sold to another man, Terik McLeod. When Drayton failed to return the weapon, claiming he had lost it in a shootout, it set off a chain of events with deadly consequences.
Police quickly identified McLeod as a person of interest, and in the weeks following the shooting, a man named Carlton Fisher came forward with crucial information. Fisher told investigators that McLeod had confessed to killing Drayton, stating, 'I had to get him before he got me.'
For years, the case remained unresolved, though McLeod had several other run-ins with the law on weapons charges. Then, in a grim turn of events, Carlton Fisher, the man who had implicated McLeod, was himself murdered on October 1, 2006. He was shot multiple times on the front porch of his home. The break in both cases finally came in April 2017, when Terik McLeod was arrested and charged with the murders of both Devaun Drayton and Carlton Fisher. Prosecutors argued that McLeod had killed Fisher to silence him for 'snitching.'
McLeod's legal proceedings were complex, with his first trial ending in a hung jury. During the trials, a witness and former friend of McLeod's came forward and confessed to Drayton's murder, a move prosecutors characterized as an attempt to 'take the body' for McLeod in retribution for him being labeled a 'snitch.' However, a jury ultimately found Terik McLeod guilty of second-degree murder for the death of Devaun Drayton and first-degree murder for the killing of Carlton Fisher. In November 2019, McLeod was sentenced to 52 years in prison.
