In the warm early hours of a Sunday in Washington, D.C., the life of 18-year-old Kyndall Myers, a Black female, was tragically cut short. On June 26, 2022, just days after her graduation from McKinley Technology High School, Myers was fatally shot in the 800 block of Quincy Street, NW. She had been at a rooftop party in the Petworth neighborhood. As people gathered on the street after the party was broken up, shots were fired from a passing vehicle into the crowd.
Myers was struck in the head by a bullet and was pronounced dead at the scene. Two other juvenile victims sustained non-serious injuries in the shooting.
Kyndall was an honor roll student and a prize-winning cheerleader with a bright future ahead of her. She had been accepted to several colleges and had chosen to attend North Carolina Central University to study sports medicine, with aspirations of becoming a personal athletic trainer. Her family described her as outgoing, funny, and a loving guardian to her younger cousins.
The investigation into her death led police to identify 23-year-old Celot Carr as the suspected shooter. According to court documents, Carr and others with him were not targeting Myers but were instead feuding with other individuals they believed were at the party. Investigators tracked a stolen Volkswagen Jetta, which had been taken in an armed carjacking days earlier, to the scene of the crime using a GPS device. Police found the abandoned vehicle hours after the shooting and recovered shell casings from inside that matched the bullet that killed Myers.
In December 2022, Celot Carr was arrested and charged with first-degree murder while armed. During court proceedings, it was revealed that Carr denied his involvement in the shooting. However, a judge found probable cause to hold him based on the evidence presented, which included the GPS data from the stolen vehicle and the ballistic match. Carr was arraigned in September 2023 and remains in custody as the case proceeds. The arrest brought a measure of peace to Kyndall's mother, who said that knowing someone was in custody helps her believe the justice system has not failed her daughter.
