Shawn Michael North, a 45-year-old Caucasian male, passed away in Waterloo, Iowa, on August 30, 2016, but the story of his death began fifteen years earlier. In the early morning hours of May 21, 2001, a violent encounter in the 1200 block of Doreen Avenue forever altered the course of his life. At the time, North told police that two men confronted him and attempted to take his truck. When he resisted, they shot him and fled the scene. Neighbors discovered him moaning and screaming in a driveway.
The gunshot wound to his spinal cord left North, then 30 years old, a paraplegic, paralyzed from the sternum down. For the next decade and a half, he lived with the devastating consequences of that night. His sister, Sherry Powers, became his primary caregiver, a constant presence through years of medical challenges. He lived on disability, eventually purchasing a home near his sister so she could better assist him. Over the years, he suffered from painful bedsores and underwent surgery for a colostomy bag.
His death in 2016 was officially linked by the medical examiner to the complications arising from the gunshot wounds he sustained fifteen years prior. Following this determination, the Waterloo Police Department reclassified the case from an aggravated assault to a homicide. Despite this change, the case remains unsolved. Evidence from the original crime scene was entered into a national database, but it has yielded no matches or leads. To this day, no suspects have been identified, and no arrests have been made in the shooting that ultimately took Shawn North's life. The case is now considered a cold case.
