Terrance Bernard Jarnelle Kinard, a 34-year-old Black man from Wilmington, Delaware, was fatally shot on May 7, 2016. Shortly after 6:20 p.m., Wilmington police were called to the 1400 block of West Third Street in the city's Hilltop neighborhood after gunfire was reported. Officers found Kinard suffering from gunshot wounds, and he was taken to a hospital, where he died from his injuries.
Although some memorial databases listed him as 37, funeral-home and contemporary news records identified him as 34 and gave his date of birth as February 21, 1982.
Known to relatives and friends as “T Doc,” Kinard was the father of three daughters and was survived by his fiancée, parents, siblings and other members of his extended family. Those who remembered him described him as outgoing, intelligent and funny. His funeral was held on May 20, 2016, at Mt. Joy United Methodist Church in Wilmington, followed by burial at Silverbrook Cemetery.
The investigation remained unresolved for approximately six years. Wilmington police eventually treated the killing as a cold case, and investigators continued seeking information from the public while no suspects were publicly identified. A breakthrough was announced in August 2022, when a New Castle County grand jury indicted Murad Diggs and Raheem Brown on first-degree murder charges. Diggs, then 39, and Brown, then 33, were arrested on August 18, three days after the indictments were issued. Both men were already being held in Delaware correctional institutions on unrelated matters when the murder charges were filed.
Prosecutors later presented the killing as the culmination of a dispute involving Diggs, Kinard and an unidentified person to whom Diggs allegedly owed between $3,000 and $4,000 in drug debt. According to the prosecution's theory described in court filings, Kinard knew both men and had been asked to collect the money. The effort allegedly created escalating hostility between Kinard and Diggs. Authorities described a series of confrontations that reportedly included an encounter at Christiana Mall, street fights, gunfire during a card game and shots fired outside the Safari Lounge.
The conflict allegedly continued until roughly five weeks before the fatal shooting, when Kinard was found inside a BMW that had been struck by gunfire on Third Street. Prosecutors contended that Diggs ultimately arranged for Brown to kill Kinard and compensated Brown with drugs. These allegations were expected to be supported by testimony from several witnesses had the case proceeded to trial.
Diggs and Brown initially faced possible life sentences under the first-degree murder charges. In October 2023, however, both men pleaded guilty to the lesser offense of second-degree murder, avoiding a trial and resolving the long-running case. Diggs, then 40, and Brown, then 35, each received a 15-year prison sentence. Their guilty pleas and sentences closed a case that had remained without an arrest for years, while formally establishing both men's criminal responsibility for Kinard's death.
