David Bailey, a 23-year-old Black man from Wilmington, Delaware, was fatally shot on the afternoon of July 28, 2017. At about 1:22 p.m., Wilmington police responded to a report of gunfire in the 700 block of South Van Buren Street, near its intersection with Beech Street. Officers found Bailey suffering from a gunshot wound to the chest. He was unconscious and unresponsive as emergency personnel attempted to save him.
Bailey was taken to Christiana Hospital, where he died from his injuries at approximately 2 p.m.
The killing unfolded at the beginning of an especially violent period in Wilmington. Over the following several days, nearly a dozen people were wounded in a series of separate shootings across the city. Bailey's relatives returned to the South Van Buren Street scene for a vigil, mourning him at the place where he had been shot. His cousin, Dajour Bailey, spoke of the permanence of the loss and expressed his love for Bailey as the family struggled with the knowledge that nothing could bring him back.
Investigators eventually connected the homicide to a teenager identified publicly by the surname Miles. Shortly after Bailey was shot, Miles arrived at St. Francis Hospital with a gunshot wound to his arm. He gave hospital employees and police a false name, but investigators determined his real identity and linked him to the confrontation in which Bailey was killed. Authorities described the incident as a gunfight and concluded that Miles was the person responsible for shooting Bailey.
The investigation remained active for several months before police made an arrest. On April 12, 2018, Wilmington officers arrested Miles, who was then 17 years old. He was charged as an adult with first-degree murder, possession of a deadly weapon during the commission of a felony and possession of a firearm by a prohibited person. After his arrest, he was committed to the Howard R. Young Correctional Institution when he was unable to post a $1 million bond.
The case did not proceed to a murder trial. In August 2019, Miles pleaded guilty to the reduced charge of second-degree murder. In December of that year, a Delaware Superior Court judge sentenced him to 20 years in prison. The sentence also required six months of either home confinement or work release after his incarceration, followed by two years of probation. The plea and sentence formally resolved the criminal case arising from Bailey's death more than two years after the shooting.
