James L. Watson Griffin, a 32-year-old Black man from Savannah, was shot on July 6, 2011, in the 1700 block of LeGrand Street, where police were called around 2 p.m. and found him inside his car with life-threatening injuries. He was rushed to the hospital, but he did not survive. The killing lingered for years as one of those cases that seemed to hang over the city, with the violence of that afternoon outlasting the moment itself and leaving his death unresolved far beyond the day it happened.
For a long time, there was no public resolution. Then, nearly six years after the shooting, Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police announced that violent crimes detectives had arrested Basheen Hills, then 24, in connection with Griffin’s murder. Police said Hills was charged in the July 2011 killing, marking the first publicly reported arrest tied to the case and turning what had been a cold, unanswered death into a prosecution. Investigators publicly emphasized the length of the effort, saying detectives had continued working the case until they were able to make an arrest.
Based on the online sources located, Basheen Hills is the only suspect or arrestee publicly identified in connection with Griffin’s death. Those sources consistently describe the case as solved by his arrest, but the materials found in this search do not clearly set out the later court outcome, such as a trial verdict or conviction, so the most firmly supported public details online are the shooting itself, Griffin’s death that same day, and Hills’ later arrest on a murder charge.
