Kenneth Allen Hamilton, a 26-year-old Black man, was caught in a sudden eruption of gunfire on the morning of September 13, 2019, in Wilmington's West Center City neighborhood. At approximately 10:34 a.m., police were dispatched to the intersection of West Fifth and North Monroe streets, where they found Hamilton and his longtime friend, Dwayne Britt, lying wounded in the street.
Both had been struck by gunfire in an attack carried out in broad daylight.
Emergency personnel rushed Hamilton and Britt from the scene to a hospital, but their injuries proved fatal. The two friends died shortly after the shooting, turning an ordinary Friday morning into a double-homicide investigation. Britt was 24, and memorial accounts described the two as having shared a close friendship for more than a decade. The violence left two families grieving at the same time and added another painful chapter to the toll of shootings in Wilmington.
Hamilton was born in Wilmington on March 21, 1993, and graduated from Christiana High School. His family remembered him as a humorous, attention-loving person who enjoyed making others laugh. He was especially devoted to his daughter and valued the time he spent with his relatives, including his siblings, nephews and niece. He enjoyed music, photographs and playful moments with the people around him, and he referred to himself as the “Neighborhood Hero,” a nickname that reflected the energetic personality his loved ones associated with him.
The circumstances leading to the shooting were not publicly explained in the immediate reporting. Authorities did not announce whether Hamilton and Britt had been specifically targeted, whether an argument or confrontation preceded the gunfire, or how many shooters may have been involved. Police asked witnesses and anyone with knowledge of the killings to contact the investigator assigned to the case, Detective William Ball.
Initial reports stated that no arrest had been made and that police had not released the name or description of a suspect. Searches of later publicly available reporting did not reveal an announced arrest, indictment, trial or conviction connected specifically to the deaths of Hamilton and Britt. No publicly identified suspect has emerged, leaving the double killing unresolved in the information available to the public and leaving both families without a reported prosecution or final accounting for what happened that morning.
