Trashawn Morris, a 27-year-old Black man from Peoria, Illinois, was remembered by his family as having a bright and joyful energy. His life was cut short by a single gunshot on the night of March 23, 2024, in what was Peoria's third homicide of the year.
The shooting happened around 10:15 p.m. at the Lexington Hills Apartments complex. According to prosecutors and evidence presented at trial, Morris went to the apartment of Javier McGhee, then 21. Doorbell video footage captured Morris knocking on the door three times and yelling, “I told you to stop texting me.” McGhee then opened the door and fired one shot, striking Morris in the chest. When Peoria Police arrived, they found Morris with a fatal gunshot wound and pronounced him dead at the scene. A second man in a neighboring apartment suffered a non-life-threatening graze wound to his back from the same bullet, which had passed through a wall.
Two days later, on March 25, police arrested Javier McGhee.
He was subsequently charged with first-degree murder and aggravated battery. On April 9, 2024, a Peoria County grand jury indicted him on the murder charge.
During a three-day trial, prosecutors presented evidence that Morris and McGhee had been in an intimate relationship and had argued after Morris began seeing someone else. A cousin of Morris testified that he had gone to McGhee’s apartment to break off the relationship. McGhee claimed he acted in self-defense, believing Morris was trying to force his way inside the apartment. However, officers testified there was no damage to the door, and a forensic pathologist stated that the lack of gunpowder on Morris’s body or clothing indicated he was not close to the gun when it was fired.
In May 2026, a Peoria County jury found Javier McGhee, then 23, guilty of first-degree murder. At his sentencing hearing, Morris’s cousin told the court that McGhee had not just ended a life but had stolen a future, calling the family’s loss overwhelming and paralyzing. McGhee read a prepared statement asking Morris’s family for forgiveness. On July 30, 2026, a judge sentenced Javier McGhee to 50 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections.
