Derri Person was a 27-year-old male of unknown race from Phoenix, Arizona, who died after being shot in the Laveen area of the city on the night of Tuesday, February 9, 2016. That evening, Phoenix police were called to a report of gunfire in the 7000 block of South 46th Lane, a residential stretch in southwest Phoenix. When officers arrived, they found Person critically wounded from gunshot injuries; he was transported for emergency medical care but did not survive.
According to information later summarized from police statements, investigators believe that shots were exchanged at around 8:50 p.m. between occupants of two vehicles on that block, turning what appears to have been a moving confrontation into a deadly encounter. Early reports indicated that the incident might have stemmed from a domestic dispute, based on comments from Phoenix police spokesperson Sgt. Trent Crump, though the precise dynamics of that dispute and how it escalated into gunfire were not fully detailed in public accounts.
The violence unfolded in front of children, an element that added another layer of trauma to the case. Police notified the Arizona Department of Child Safety because minors were present when the shooting occurred, suggesting that at least some of the people involved had family ties or were in a domestic setting at or near the time of the confrontation. Publicly available summaries emphasize that Person succumbed to his injuries after this exchange of gunfire, but they do not describe him as being armed or give detailed information about his role beyond being the person who ultimately died as a result of the shooting.
In the aftermath, Phoenix police opened a homicide investigation, and the case has since appeared in public cold-case and unsolved-homicide compilations for the Phoenix area, which list Person by name and classify his death as a murder that remains under investigation. None of the open-source records reviewed indicate that any suspect has been publicly identified by name, arrested, or charged in connection with the shooting. Available summaries describe the circumstances, possible domestic-dispute connection, and the presence of children, but they consistently stop short of announcing a resolution, underscoring that Person’s killing is still treated as an unsolved homicide in Phoenix.
