In the late hours of a Thursday evening, the city of Suffolk, Virginia, was shattered by an act of violence that claimed the life of 30-year-old Demonte Lamont Tillery. On September 12, 2024, at approximately 11:25 p.m., multiple 911 calls flooded the Suffolk Emergency Communications Center, reporting gunfire in the 800 block of East Washington Street, near White Marsh Road.
Responding officers arrived at a grim scene beside a local business, where they discovered five individuals had been shot.
Among the victims was Demonte Lamont Tillery, a Black male who was rushed to a local hospital but succumbed to his injuries. Another man, 37-year-old William Eugene Goodman Jr., was pronounced dead at the scene. Three other people, two men and one woman, were also wounded in the shooting and transported to a hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries. The motive for the shooting and the relationship between the victims was not immediately clear to investigators.
In the days following the shooting, Suffolk Police Chief James Buie described the investigation as very active, with detectives collecting and analyzing numerous shell casings and reviewing video footage from the area. Despite these efforts, authorities had not identified any suspects and made a desperate plea to the community for any information that could lead to an arrest. Chief Buie called the incident a 'senseless act of violence' and assured the public that the department would do everything in its power to bring those responsible to justice. As of mid-September, no arrests had been made, and no suspect information had been released to the public.
Family and friends gathered for a candlelight vigil to honor the memory of both Tillery and Goodman. It was revealed that Tillery, a father of five, had recently started working for Goodman's dump truck company. On the night of the shooting, they were reportedly together with the other victims working to fix one of the dump trucks. The community was left mourning the loss of the two men, with calls for an end to gun violence and for anyone with information to come forward.
