Shelton Johns was a 32-year-old Black man whose life ended during a violent and still-unsolved shooting in the New Castle, Delaware, area on Sunday, March 8, 2015. Delaware State Police records identify the location of the homicide as northbound Interstate 495 and state that Johns was shot while traveling along the highway. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The first indication that something had gone terribly wrong came at approximately 5:00 that morning.
A passing motorist noticed a Chrysler Town and Country van that had left the roadway and ended up in a ditch along the east side of northbound U.S. Route 13, just south of the entrance ramp to northbound I-495. The motorist stopped to offer assistance and discovered Johns slumped inside the vehicle. A woman from Wilmington was also at the scene suffering from injuries, and the motorist immediately called 911.
Emergency personnel transported the woman to Christiana Hospital, where she was initially reported in stable condition. Johns could not be saved and was pronounced dead where the van was found. His body was taken by the Delaware Division of Forensic Science for examination as investigators began trying to reconstruct what had happened before the vehicle left the roadway.
The investigation quickly expanded beyond the disabled van. Troopers located a second vehicle as well as spent shell casings on northbound I-495, just north of the split with northbound I-95. Detectives were investigating whether that evidence and the second vehicle were connected to the shooting. Police closed portions of northbound Route 13 between Memorial Drive and I-495, along with a section of northbound I-495 between I-95 and Route 13, for approximately six hours while investigators processed the scenes and searched for evidence.
The evidence suggested that the violence began on the highway before the vehicle carrying Johns eventually came to rest near Route 13. However, publicly available reports do not identify the circumstances that led to the gunfire, explain whether Johns and the wounded woman knew their attacker, or disclose a confirmed motive. Police also did not publicly identify the owner or occupant of the second vehicle found during the investigation in the reports located for this case.
No publicly available source located for this synopsis identifies a person who was arrested, charged, tried, or convicted in Johns' killing. Delaware State Police continue to list Shelton Johns among their unsolved homicide cases in New Castle County, and the agency's cold-case record identifies the investigation as case number 01-15-18236. The absence of a named suspect or arrest means that, more than a decade after the shooting, the question of who fired the shots that killed Johns and why remains unresolved.
