In the late hours of a Friday night in Minneapolis, on August 15, 2014, a dispute between two men escalated into a fatal encounter. Kenneth Madison, a 53-year-old Black/African American male, was in an apartment on the 2700 block of Blaisdell Avenue South when an argument broke out with another man. Witnesses later recounted that just before a gunshot rang out, Madison had challenged the other man, asking, "What are you going to do…shoot me?".
Responding to a call just before midnight,
police officers found Kenneth Madison inside the apartment building with a gunshot wound to his waist. Initially, the occupants of the apartment, including the man who lived there, told investigators that Madison had stumbled into the building already injured. However, their story soon changed. They admitted that Madison had been shot inside the apartment and identified the shooter, stating that he had threatened to kill them if they spoke to the police. Madison was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center, where he died a few hours later from a gunshot wound to the abdomen.
The investigation quickly pointed to 59-year-old Rico P. Howard as the suspect. Two days after the shooting, police received a crucial tip that Howard was attempting to leave the state. They found him on a Greyhound bus bound for Los Angeles. Howard had purchased a one-way ticket less than 24 hours after the shooting and was carrying no luggage, only $5,000 in cash. He was arrested and taken to the Hennepin County Jail. Rico P. Howard was subsequently charged with second-degree murder for the death of Kenneth Madison.
