Jerome Pippins, a 42-year-old Black/African American man, was found dead on the morning of August 11, 2016, inside a residence in the Marcum Terrace area of Huntington, West Virginia. Pippins had previously lived in the Bronx, New York, and local news reports initially described him simply as a New York man whose body had been discovered at a Huntington home. The first reports did not immediately identify him or describe the death as a shooting.
Huntington police initially treated the discovery as an unattended death while investigators worked to determine what had happened.
Police said the body was discovered early that Thursday morning in Marcum Terrace. Huntington Police Chief Joe Ciccarelli said Pippins' body was being transported to the medical examiner's office and that investigators expected to know more after an autopsy was completed. By the following day, police publicly identified Pippins and disclosed that he had suffered a gunshot wound. More specifically, authorities said he had been found dead inside a home in the 1000 block of Marcum Terrace. The discovery shifted the case from an unexplained death investigation to an investigation centered on fatal gun violence.
The publicly released accounts provided few details about the circumstances leading up to the shooting. Police did not disclose when Pippins was believed to have been shot, whether anyone else had been inside the residence, whether there had been a confrontation, or what type of firearm had been used. Authorities also did not publicly describe a possible motive or indicate whether the shooting was believed to have resulted from a dispute, robbery, drug-related activity, or some other circumstance. Investigators appealed directly to the public for assistance, asking anyone with information to contact the Huntington Police Department's detective bureau or tip line.
Pippins was born on September 25, 1973, to Willis Pippins Sr. and Almeda Holloway. His obituary described him as formerly of the Bronx and said he left behind five children: Jerome Pippins Jr., Zakiyyah Pippins, Jenayah Pippins, Jatoriyah Pippins and Jakobi Pippins. He was also survived by numerous siblings, including Anthony Holloway of Huntington and several relatives living in New York and Florida. His brother Alex Pippins had died before him. Funeral information stated that no services were scheduled at the time and that the Tri-State Cremation Society was assisting the family.
Despite the police investigation and the request for tips, publicly available news reporting located for Pippins' death does not identify a named suspect. No reliable public report located in connection with the case documents an arrest for his killing, the filing of a murder charge, an indictment, a trial, a guilty plea, or a conviction. The early police accounts continued to describe the investigation as ongoing and did not announce that detectives had established who fired the fatal shot.
As a result, the publicly documented story of Pippins' death ends without a reported resolution. What began as the discovery of an apparently unattended body in a Huntington residence became a gunshot-death investigation after examination of the circumstances, but authorities released little about the evidence they developed afterward. Pippins' death left five children and a large extended family mourning him while investigators sought information about the shooting, and the available public record does not show that anyone was ultimately arrested or prosecuted for killing him.
