Arteise M.N. Brown, a 24-year-old Black woman and mother of two young boys, was killed on the evening of April 28, 2015, in Wilmington, Delaware. Shortly after 8 p.m., Brown was in the 600 block of West Sixth Street, only a few blocks from her home. Court records later described her as walking with another person and two children when the group stopped briefly so that one of the children could tie a shoe. Moments later, gunfire erupted.
At least 13 shots were reportedly fired in the crowded West Center City neighborhood.
Brown was struck in the lower back. A second victim, 19-year-old Alisa Dollar, was struck in the upper thigh as she was getting out of a vehicle. Witness accounts described a chaotic scene, with a large number of people outside when the shooting occurred. Police and paramedics attempted to save Brown, performing CPR both at the scene and while she was being transported, but she was pronounced dead at Christiana Hospital. Dollar survived and was later released from the hospital.
Investigators received differing glimpses of what had happened. Witnesses described a man dressed largely in black, with white shoes, firing a handgun from an area near a daycare. One account indicated that the shooter ran north after the gunfire and entered a white vehicle. Another witness who was with Brown reportedly grabbed the children and took cover between nearby steps when the shooting began. Although numerous people were in the area, investigators initially struggled to obtain a reliable identification of the gunman. Brown's relatives said they did not believe she had been deliberately targeted and believed she had been caught in the violence by chance.
In the days following the killing, Brown's family, friends and community members gathered near the shooting scene, and a $10,000 reward was offered for information leading investigators to the person responsible. The killing became part of a broader public outcry over gun violence in Wilmington, and Brown's relatives joined clergy and community leaders in calling for an end to the shootings that had repeatedly affected the neighborhood.
Nearly a month after the homicide, Wilmington police arrested 25-year-old Mateo Pinkston. He was taken into custody on May 20 near Seventh and Washington streets, not far from where Brown had been killed. Police accused Pinkston of being responsible for the fatal shooting and the wounding of the other woman. He was charged with second-degree murder and additional offenses that included assault, reckless endangering and weapons-related charges. His bail was set at $1.5 million, and he was held at the Howard R. Young Correctional Institution while the prosecution moved forward.
The case against Pinkston eventually encountered a critical problem. As his trial approached in June 2016, the prosecution's primary identification witness changed her account only hours before she was expected to testify. According to the Delaware Department of Justice, the witness acknowledged that she had not actually seen the shooter and had identified Pinkston to police because she had heard that he was responsible through what was described as the "word on the street." Other witnesses had either been unable to see the gunman's face or could not identify Pinkston from a photographic lineup. The surviving shooting victim also could not identify who had shot her.
Without the eyewitness identification on which the prosecution had depended, authorities concluded that they no longer had sufficient evidence to take the case to trial. Prosecutors dismissed the second-degree murder and weapons charges against Pinkston in June 2016, and he was released in connection with Brown's homicide case. The dismissal did not amount to a finding that another person had committed the shooting; rather, prosecutors said the evidence available at that point could no longer support the prosecution. Police again appealed to witnesses who had been present that night to provide information. No one was convicted of killing Arteise Brown, leaving the circumstances of who fired the fatal shot unresolved.
