Derrick C. Thurman Jr., a 14-year-old Black boy, was found shot to death on the front porch of his family’s home in Kansas City, Missouri, in the early hours of June 7, 2023. It was the kind of ordinary place where a kid should’ve been safest—at home, steps from the front door—yet that porch became the last scene of his life.
Police were dispatched to 8335 Wayne Ave. around 5:37 a.m. after a shooting call, and they arrived to find Derrick on the porch with gunshot wounds.
Paramedics responded, but he was pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators recovered multiple spent shell casings in the front yard, an ugly scatter of evidence that suggested the shots had been fired from outside toward the home.
As the morning unfolded, the people who loved him were left trying to stitch together the missing minutes. Family members told reporters they believed Derrick had been on that porch earlier with two other young people, but by the time his body was discovered—around 5:00 a.m.—he was alone. His mother described him as a science-loving kid who spent a lot of time at home, someone she saw as “nerdy” in the sweetest sense: curious, bright, and not looking for trouble. Now she was left with the unbearable question of how violence still found him, even there.
In the days after the killing, police canvassed the scene and urged anyone with information to come forward, pointing the public to the homicide unit and Crime Stoppers. While family members said they’d been told there were leads, no suspect names were publicly identified in the initial reporting, and the case remained listed by Kansas City police among its unsolved homicides, with no arrests announced in connection with Derrick’s death.
Grief, meanwhile, moved on a different timetable—one measured in funeral arrangements and sudden expenses. A GoFundMe created on the family’s behalf described the devastation of losing him and asked for help covering burial costs. A funeral home obituary later announced visitation and services for June 24, 2023, at Watkins Heritage Chapel, a public moment of goodbye after a death that had arrived without warning.
