Darrius Alexander Jackson-Paul was a 23-year-old Black man whose life ended in gunfire on Wednesday, May 10, 2017, in Wilmington, Delaware. Shortly before his death, he was found on the 500 block of West 25th Street suffering from a gunshot wound to the head. The injury proved fatal, transforming an ordinary spring evening into the beginning of a homicide investigation and leaving his family searching for an explanation.
Jackson-Paul had been born on October 4, 1993, at St.
Francis Hospital in Wilmington. He was the son of Alicia Jackson and Warner Paul Jr. During his childhood, he attended Christ Our King and P.S. duPont Middle School before moving with his mother and sisters to Philadelphia. There, the children attended Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic School and were baptized in the Catholic faith. His death brought him back into Wilmington's public record not through the promise described by his loved ones, but as another young person lost to the city's gun violence.
In the weeks following the shooting, investigators had not announced an arrest or publicly identified a suspect. The silence surrounding the case weighed heavily on Jackson-Paul's mother, who believed that people in the community knew what had happened but were unwilling to speak with police. She said that an image of her son lying at the scene had circulated among people, deepening her pain and reinforcing her belief that witnesses or others with knowledge were remaining silent.
Nearly a month after the killing, Alicia Jackson made a public appeal for information. Her plea was not simply for sympathy; she wanted someone who knew the identity of the gunman or understood the circumstances surrounding the shooting to come forward. At that stage, the investigation appeared to be stalled by the absence of cooperating witnesses, and Wilmington police continued urging anyone with information to contact the department.
Publicly accessible reporting from the immediate aftermath does not provide a verified description of what led to the shooting, whether Jackson-Paul had been specifically targeted, or whether an argument or other confrontation preceded the gunfire. It also does not identify eyewitnesses or disclose physical evidence recovered from the scene. The clearest established facts are that he was shot in the head on West 25th Street, that the wound caused his death, and that no arrest had been announced during the first month of the investigation.
Jackson-Paul's funeral services were held on May 19, 2017, at Evan W. Smith Funeral Services on North Union Street in Wilmington. Behind the homicide statistics was a son and brother whose family had to bury him while still lacking public answers about why he had been killed. Although his mother's appeal drew renewed attention to the case, the reliable public reporting available here does not independently establish a later arrest, criminal charge, trial, or conviction connected to his death.
