On a summer afternoon on the Fourth of July in 2016, the life of 38-year-old Christopher Porter, a Black/African American male, was tragically cut short in a shocking act of violence at his own home in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The friendly atmosphere of a holiday was shattered when police were called to Porter's residence on Morgan Avenue North in the afternoon, where they discovered him lying in his front yard with a gunshot wound.
He was rushed to the Hennepin County Medical Center, but his injuries proved to be fatal.
At the scene of the shooting, authorities encountered a perplexing situation. A man, later identified as 44-year-old Anthony Collins, was found wandering around the yard. According to witnesses, Collins and Porter were longtime friends, making the events that unfolded even more incomprehensible. Collins was reportedly heard making bizarre statements, claiming that "God made me do it" and that "God told me to kill him." When officers tried to intervene, he was initially non-compliant, at one point shaping his hand like a gun and pointing it to his head before he was eventually taken into custody.
In the aftermath of the tragic event, Anthony Collins was charged with second-degree murder in the death of his friend, Christopher Porter. Investigators recovered a. 44-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun from the grass near where the shooting occurred. In a strange turn during his interview with law enforcement, Collins denied even knowing Porter, a claim that stood in stark contrast to the accounts of neighbors and other witnesses who described the two as having been friends for years. The Hennepin County Attorney's Office requested that his bail be set at $1 million.
