On December 4, 1981, male victim Tyrone Whittle, age 27, was shot to death in Stanton, Delaware, during a triple shooting that police described as an “execution-type” murder-suicide. According to contemporaneous reporting, the gunman forced entry into the apartment of 26-year-old Althea Lyons at the Christiana Court apartments off State Route 4 around 6:45 a.m., used a 12-gauge shotgun to kill Ms. Lyons and male victim Tyrone Whittle, age 27, then turned the weapon on himself.
Responding New Castle County officers found three bodies and the shotgun inside the residence. The incident was characterized as a jealous-rage attack. The reporting did not specify the ethnicity of male victim Tyrone Whittle, age 27.
Investigators identified the shooter as Willie Andrews, 36, of Georgetown Village Apartments in New Castle, an employee at the Chrysler assembly plant in Newark. Male victim Tyrone Whittle, age 27, was identified as a Wilmington postal letter carrier who lived in the 2700 block of West Street. Ms. Lyons, who also died in the attack, was a bus driver for DART. Two young children—one reportedly fathered by the shooter and the other by Ms. Lyons's estranged husband—fled the apartment during the gunfire and alerted neighbors, according to the same report. The sources do not provide the ethnicity of male victim Tyrone Whittle, age 27.
Because the identified suspect, Willie Andrews, died by suicide at the scene, there were no arrests. Subsequent public compilations of gun-violence victims continue to list male victim Tyrone Whittle, age 27, as killed by gunfire on December 4, 1981, in Stanton, Delaware; these summaries do not add suspect information beyond the original reporting, nor do they provide the victim's ethnicity.
