On the evening of December 2, 2017, Salim Richards, a 35-year-old male, was arriving at the Cove at 44th Apartments in west Phoenix. As he made his way into the complex near 43rd Avenue and Indian School Road, a single gunshot pierced the night air, and Richards fell, fatally wounded by a bullet to the chest. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Witnesses reported hearing the sound of a vehicle speeding away immediately after the shot was fired.
In the initial stages of the
investigation, Phoenix police were confronted with a crime that seemed to be a random act of violence. Detectives considered the possibility of a robbery gone wrong, as a golden chain and Richards' personal 9mm Glock pistol were missing from his person. The theory shifted as they explored whether it had been a drive-by shooting, with uncertainty about whether the fatal shot was fired while he was in his car or as he was walking. Richards was a private security guard who grew up streetwise in Brooklyn and was described by his mother as a peaceful man who had left a difficult neighborhood behind. At 6-foot-4-inches and over 300 pounds, he was not seen as an easy target for a random attack.
The break in the case came from a separate and shocking crime. Fifteen days after Richards' murder, police arrested Cleophus Cooksey Jr. for the shooting deaths of his own mother and stepfather. As investigators delved into Cooksey's activities, they began to connect him to a string of recent, unsolved homicides that had plagued the Phoenix area over a three-week period between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Ballistic evidence was crucial, linking the shell casings from other crime scenes to the very Glock that had been stolen from Salim Richards on the night he was killed. It was discovered that Cooksey had used Richards' stolen handgun in the subsequent murders he committed.
Further investigation revealed a possible prior connection between the two men; records showed that Cooksey and Richards had been incarcerated in the same unit of the Lewis prison for a period between 2003 and 2004. Cell phone records placed Cooksey in the immediate vicinity of the Cove apartments just before and after Richards was shot. Cleophus Cooksey Jr. was ultimately charged and convicted in a string of eight murders, with Salim Richards being one of his victims in the deadly spree. Prosecutors sought the death penalty for the series of killings that authorities never found a definitive motive for.
