Jeremy Tunnell, a 20-year-old Black man, was fatally shot late on the night of May 24, 2018, in Wilmington, Delaware. At approximately 10:18 p.m., the Wilmington Police Department received a ShotSpotter notification reporting gunfire near the intersection of West Fifth and North Madison streets. Officers responding to the alert found Tunnell, who lived on the 800 block of West Fifth Street, suffering from a gunshot wound to his lower abdomen.
Emergency personnel treated Tunnell at the
scene before rushing him by ambulance to Christiana Hospital. Despite efforts to save him, he was pronounced dead at the hospital. Investigators initially handled the incident as a death investigation while awaiting the results of an autopsy. Several days later, the Delaware Division of Forensic Science determined that Tunnell had died as a result of the gunshot wound and formally classified his death as a homicide.
The available public reports do not describe exactly what happened in the moments before the shooting. They do not identify where the gunman was positioned, whether Tunnell had been standing outside or sitting in a vehicle when he was struck, or whether more than one person participated in the attack. No detailed witness account, description of a suspect, possible getaway vehicle, recovered firearm, or publicly established motive was released in the initial coverage. The incident was categorized in gun-violence records as involving possible gang activity, although those records do not explain the evidence supporting that classification or establish that the killing was ordered or committed by a particular group.
Tunnell had previously been identified by Delaware prosecutors as a member of the Wilmington-area Only My Brothers gang in connection with an unrelated criminal prosecution. Before his death, he had pleaded guilty to charges arising from an earlier gang and firearms investigation. Another man, Jabri Hunter, was later prosecuted for violating a court order by having contact with Tunnell in May 2018. Hunter pleaded guilty to criminal contempt and a probation violation and received a sentence that included 90 days in prison, probation and GPS monitoring. That prosecution concerned prohibited contact with Tunnell and was not announced as an arrest or conviction for Tunnell's killing.
No reliable public announcement has identified a person charged with murdering Jeremy Tunnell. Available reports do not document an arrest, murder indictment, trial or conviction directly connected to the May 24 shooting. Although later gang investigations in Wilmington resulted in numerous defendants being charged with other murders, shootings and firearm offenses, publicly released case summaries do not clearly name Tunnell's death as one of the homicides solved through those prosecutions. Based on the publicly available information, the person or people responsible for killing him have not been publicly identified, and the homicide remains without a publicly reported resolution.
