On the night of November 12, 2012, 20-year-old Peter Michael DiSabatino, a University of Delaware sophomore, was shot outside the Studio Green Apartments at 211 Thorn Lane in Newark, Delaware. Officers were called around 9:20 p.m. and found the 20-year-old male on the sidewalk with gunshot wounds; he was rushed to the hospital but died shortly after arrival.
The scene—an off-campus courtyard near student housing—fell suddenly quiet except for flashing cruisers and taped-off walkways, the outlines of the emergency response lingering long after the sirens faded.
In the immediate aftermath, detectives worked the case as a homicide with few public leads. Early witness accounts pointed to multiple assailants fleeing the area, and for years the investigation moved in fits and starts as the cold case team re-interviewed witnesses and re-examined evidence gathered that November night. The memory of the 20-year-old victim resonated on campus and in his hometown, where remembrances described a former Appoquinimink High School captain who had only recently begun his college journey.
A breakthrough came more than a decade later. On January 30, 2024, the New Castle County Division of Police announced the arrest of 33-year-old Alando Dale in connection with the November 2012 killing of the 20-year-old male victim. Investigators said renewed work by the Major Crimes and Cold Case squads identified Dale as the suspect, reviving a case that had shadowed Newark for nearly twelve years. News reports at the time echoed the department's statement: the arrest closed in on answers long sought by the community and the 20-year-old's family.
According to subsequent filings and official summaries, the shooting unfolded during a drug transaction that turned fatal outside the apartment complex. In September 2024, Dale pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. On February 20, 2025, a Delaware judge sentenced him to 30 years in prison, suspended after 20 years, followed by transitional confinement—an outcome announced by state officials and reflected in regional reporting. With that sentence, the case of the 20-year-old male victim moved from a long-unsolved mystery to a measured, if belated, resolution.
Even with the conviction, the record preserves the stark particulars of that night: the time and place, the 20-year-old's transport from sidewalk to hospital, and the investigators who refused to let the file gather dust. The Studio Green courtyard is quiet again, but the public documents of the case stand as testament to the work that ultimately identified a suspect, secured a plea, and imposed a sentence for the killing of a 20-year-old male in Newark, Delaware.
