Raquis Q. Deburnure was a 16-year-old Black male whose life ended in a burst of gunfire in Wilmington, Delaware, on May 31, 2018. Police responded to the unit block of East 23rd Street and found Raquis suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. He had been struck in the arm, leg, and head. Emergency personnel rushed him to Christiana Hospital, but his injuries were too severe, and he died shortly after arriving. His killing became Wilmington's eighth gun homicide of 2018.
Raquis's death came amid an especially violent period in his neighborhood, where four people reportedly lost their lives within a single week. Photographs remembered him with a broad smile that made him squint, while memorial messages described him as loving, caring, honest, respectful, and deeply missed by his family. The shooting added to a history of devastating loss within his family. His grandfather, Arthur L. Rollins, had already buried three grandchildren who had been killed by gunfire in Wilmington. Before that summer ended, the family would experience another tragedy when Raquis's half-brother, Rashaad Wisher, was killed only a few blocks from where Raquis had been shot.
Publicly available accounts do not explain what led to the shooting, whether Raquis was specifically targeted, how many shooters may have been involved, or whether investigators recovered a weapon or other identifying evidence. Authorities have not publicly named a suspect or released a description of anyone believed responsible. No arrest, criminal charge, trial, plea, or conviction connected to Raquis's death could be found in the available official and news sources.
The Wilmington Police Department currently identifies Raquis's killing as an unsolved cold case and states that the investigation remains ongoing. The department's Cold Case Unit generally assumes responsibility for homicides that have remained unresolved after investigative leads have been exhausted, continuing to review information and seek new evidence. Years after Raquis was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead, police are still asking anyone with knowledge of what happened to come forward, leaving his family without an arrest and without a public explanation of who killed him or why.
