Emmanuel S. Kamara Jr., a 23-year-old Black man, was driving through Wilmington on the evening of July 20, 2019, when gunfire suddenly tore into his vehicle. Authorities later determined that the shooting occurred near the 11th Street off-ramp from southbound Interstate 95. An unknown person or group of people fired several rounds into the moving vehicle, leaving Kamara mortally wounded as he continued from the highway toward downtown Wilmington.
Shortly before 9 p.m., Wilmington police
received a report that a vehicle had crashed into the PureBread Deli in the 500 block of Delaware Avenue. Officers arrived to find Kamara inside the damaged vehicle suffering from a gunshot wound. Emergency personnel transported him to a hospital, but he could not be saved and was pronounced dead. No employees, customers, pedestrians, or other occupants were reported injured when the vehicle struck the building.
The unusual crash initially brought Wilmington police to the scene, but the preliminary investigation indicated that the fatal gunfire had occurred on Interstate 95, outside the Wilmington Police Department's jurisdiction. The Delaware State Police consequently became responsible for the homicide investigation, with Wilmington officers assisting because Kamara and his vehicle came to a stop inside the city. Kamara was identified as a resident of Chichester, Pennsylvania, rather than Wilmington, despite his death occurring after the vehicle entered the city.
Investigators concluded that Kamara had been deliberately fired upon while driving, but publicly available information does not establish why he was targeted, whether the attack followed an earlier encounter, or whether the shooters were traveling in another vehicle. Police described the assailant or assailants as unknown and did not release a description of a suspect, a suspected vehicle, or a possible motive.
The Delaware State Police later included Kamara's death among its unsolved homicide cases. No arrest, criminal charge, trial, or conviction has been publicly announced in connection with the shooting. The official cold-case information continues to describe the killer or killers as unidentified, leaving unanswered who opened fire on Kamara's vehicle and what led to the deadly attack that ended with his car crashing into the Wilmington deli.
