Jason E. Mills was a 23-year-old Black man from Seaford, Delaware, whose life ended in a shooting near Dover on Thursday, February 25, 2016. Mills had been born on May 27, 1992, and attended public schools in Sussex County. On the night he was killed, he was in the Capital Park neighborhood, a residential development outside Dover that falls under the jurisdiction of the Delaware State Police.
The gunfire erupted in the area of 242 South Governor’s Boulevard.
Mills was struck multiple times, and shell casings were later discovered in a nearby yard. Instead of being transported by an ambulance, he was placed in a private vehicle and rushed to Kent General Hospital. By the time police learned that a shooting victim had arrived at the hospital, Mills had died from his injuries and was pronounced dead there.
Delaware State Police homicide detectives and evidence technicians assumed control of the investigation. They examined the area along South Governor’s Boulevard, collected the shell casings and worked to reconstruct what had happened before Mills was taken from the neighborhood. An examination by the Delaware Division of Forensic Science determined that he had suffered multiple gunshot wounds, and his death was classified as a homicide.
Authorities publicly identified Mills the following day and appealed for information from anyone who had witnessed the shooting, heard the gunfire or knew what led to the attack. The available official accounts do not describe a possible motive, identify the type of firearm used or explain whether Mills had been deliberately approached, ambushed or caught in an exchange of gunfire. They also do not disclose how many people may have participated or whether investigators recovered additional physical evidence beyond the shell casings.
No suspect has been publicly named in Mills’s killing, and no arrest, criminal charge, trial or conviction has been announced in connection with the case. The Delaware State Police continues to list the homicide as an unsolved case under case number 03-16-011612. Investigators have continued seeking information from the public, leaving Mills’s family without a publicly identified perpetrator or a resolution to the shooting that took his life.
