Aracelio Cruz, a 59-year-old White/Caucasian man from Wilmington, Delaware, was killed on the evening of January 31, 2019. At approximately 8:57 p.m., a Wilmington police officer patrolling near Second Street and Van Buren Street heard several gunshots. Officers responding to the sound of the gunfire found Cruz in the 1100 block of Pleasant Street, close to the intersection with North Van Buren Street.
He was unresponsive when police reached him, and paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene.
The shooting immediately became a homicide investigation. Detectives worked to reconstruct what had happened in the moments before the gunfire and searched for evidence that could identify the person responsible. Nearly two months later, on March 26, police announced that investigators had recovered surveillance footage showing an individual in the area before the killing. Authorities publicly sought help identifying that person and asked anyone with information to contact the Wilmington Police Department.
The investigation was led by Detective Bill Ball of the department’s Criminal Investigations Division. As evidence was developed, detectives identified Frederick Trice, a 24-year-old Newark resident, as the suspected shooter and obtained a warrant for his arrest. On April 9, 2019, Wilmington detectives and members of the United States Marshals Task Force located Trice and took him into custody without incident.
Trice was charged with first-degree murder, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, and possession of a firearm by a person prohibited. Following his arraignment in Justice of the Peace Court 11, he was committed to the Howard R. Young Correctional Facility in Wilmington in lieu of $580,000 secured bail. Police described the arrest as the result of a sustained investigation and assistance from the public.
The publicly available reports reviewed do not provide a clear account of the alleged motive, the relationship between Cruz and Trice, or the specific evidence that led investigators to identify Trice as the suspect. They also do not establish a later trial outcome, dismissal, plea, conviction, acquittal, or sentence. The documented case history therefore ends with Trice’s arrest and the filing of the murder and firearm charges, which were accusations requiring resolution in court.
