Alexus M. Cumberbatch, a 23-year-old Black / African American female from Wilmington, Delaware, was killed after gunfire broke out late on the night of July 28, 2020, in the 1100 block of Beech Street. Police responded at about 10:55 p.m. and found four people suffering from gunshot wounds. The scene, near Van Buren Street, quickly became the site of a double fatal shooting: Alexus Cumberbatch and 17-year-old Nyzere Seth both died, while two men, ages 18 and 26, were taken to the hospital in
stable condition.
Alexus was not described by police as the intended target in the immediate reports. Her mother, Sharieff Stewart Herring, later said Alexus had been caught in the crossfire of the quadruple shooting as she was walking out of a store on Beech Street. The loss was especially painful because Alexus was close to a major milestone: according to her mother, she would have graduated from Wilmington University in May 2021 and had wanted to become a police officer. After her death, her mother worked to turn grief into something lasting by creating the Alexus M. Cumberbatch Scholarship Fund, awarding money to local students and asking them to write about gun violence prevention.
In the days after the shooting, Wilmington police said the case remained under investigation and asked anyone with information to contact Detective Mackenzie Kirlin. Early coverage reported that investigators had not released a motive or a suspect description, and FOX 29 later reported that no arrests had been made in Alexus's killing. By May 2021, Wilmington police still described the investigation into the quadruple shooting as ongoing.
More than three years later, the case was still unresolved in public reporting. In an October 2023 WHYY story, Alexus's mother spoke through tears while meeting with other Wilmington mothers who had lost children to gun violence. WHYY reported that Alexus, known as “Lil Lex,” was a bystander struck by a stray bullet after, according to her mother, a member of the NorthPak gang opened fire on a corner in Wilmington's Browntown neighborhood. The same report said a teenage boy was also killed and two men were wounded, but no one had been charged in the mass shooting.
The most specific suspect-related information publicly reported came through Alexus's mother's account in that WHYY story. She said a detective told her the gunman was later killed in a retaliatory shooting, leaving her feeling that justice in her daughter's case might never come through a courtroom. Online searches of public reporting found no confirmed arrest, trial, conviction, or named living suspect in Alexus Cumberbatch's killing; the available sources instead describe an unsolved mass shooting, an unnamed alleged gunman, and a family left to build a legacy in Alexus's name while the case remained without charges.
