Kelli Lynette Snow, a 29-year-old Black woman from Wilmington, Delaware, was killed during a violent double homicide in the Brandywine Village area in early February 2018. Her life was remembered by relatives as resilient, loving and unforgettable, but the circumstances in which she was found revealed that her final moments had been marked by deliberate violence.
At approximately 1 p.m.
on February 5, Wilmington police officers were sent to a residence at 2230 Lamotte Street after someone requested a welfare check on the people living there. Inside the home, officers discovered Snow and Gregory “Greg” Jenkins. Snow had suffered a fatal gunshot wound to the head. Jenkins had been subjected to an especially prolonged assault, suffering injuries from a beating, stabbing and gunfire. Investigators believed both victims had been dead for several days before anyone entered the house and found them. Snow's recorded date of death was February 1, 2018.
The discovery immediately became a double-homicide investigation. Police initially had no witnesses who could explain what had happened inside the residence, and the motive was not publicly established during the earliest reporting. Detectives processed the home for physical evidence and recovered six spent 9-millimeter cartridge casings, three fired projectiles and four live rounds of 9-millimeter ammunition. The evidence suggested that multiple shots had been fired during the attack.
The investigation eventually focused on Neki Gibbs and Dejuan Cruz. Both men were arrested and identified as suspects connected to the killings. Court and incident records listed Gibbs and Cruz among those accused in the case, with prosecutors bringing charges that included first-degree murder, robbery, home invasion, burglary and conspiracy. The combination of charges reflected the prosecution's contention that the victims were killed during a planned intrusion and robbery rather than an accidental or spontaneous confrontation.
Ballistics evidence became an important part of the prosecution against Gibbs. Authorities compared the shell casings recovered from the Lamotte Street home with casings from a separate shooting reported in Newark on January 30, only days before Snow and Jenkins were believed to have been killed. A Delaware State Police firearms examiner determined that casings from the Newark shooting and the Wilmington homicide scene had been fired from the same weapon. Gibbs' defense attempted to limit or exclude testimony concerning that ballistic comparison, but the Superior Court denied the request, allowing prosecutors to present the firearms evidence.
Gibbs was formally indicted in September 2019 on a first-degree murder charge connected to the Wilmington case, along with a criminal-mischief charge arising from the Newark shooting. As his murder trial approached in March 2020, Gibbs reached a plea agreement with Delaware prosecutors and was scheduled to enter the negotiated plea in court. Publicly accessible reports confirm that the agreement was reached, although detailed reporting about the precise offense to which he pleaded and the final sentence imposed is limited.
Cruz was also arrested and accused of participating in the home invasion and killings. Available public records identify him as a second suspect and show that he faced serious charges alongside Gibbs, but considerably less information has been published about the final disposition of his prosecution. The publicly available material does not clearly establish whether Cruz proceeded to trial, accepted a separate plea agreement or was ultimately convicted of the charges.
Snow's death was therefore not left without identified suspects. The investigation produced two arrests, extensive felony charges and a prosecution supported in part by forensic firearms evidence. Even with those developments, the limited public reporting concerning the final court outcomes leaves some questions unanswered, particularly regarding the complete terms of Gibbs' plea agreement and what ultimately happened in Cruz's case. What remains clear is that Snow and Jenkins were attacked inside a Wilmington home, remained undiscovered for days and became the victims of a brutal crime that deeply affected those who loved them.
