Dylan Stewart, a 21-year-old man from Hopkinsville, Kentucky, was found fatally shot inside a residence on Brown Street on December 22, 2020. The discovery came after Hopkinsville Police were asked to conduct a welfare check. Officers arrived at the home shortly after 4:00 p.m. and found Stewart unresponsive inside. Christian County Coroner Scott Daniel determined that Stewart had suffered a gunshot wound.
At first, authorities had not publicly determined whether the shooting was a homicide or whether another explanation might account for Stewart's death. His body was transported to Madisonville for an autopsy. After the examination, investigators announced that the death had been ruled a homicide, changing what began as a welfare check into a murder investigation. Police began speaking with Stewart's relatives and people living in the neighborhood as they tried to determine what had happened inside the Brown Street residence and who was responsible for the shooting.
Stewart had already survived a separate shooting less than two years earlier. On January 23, 2019, he and Coryvon Thomas were inside a Hopkinsville residence on Short Bethel Street when a planned robbery and burglary unfolded. Court records later described several people entering the residence after two young women had initially gone inside. During the confrontation, Stewart was attacked in a hallway and was shot in the leg, while Thomas was killed. Stewart survived that shooting. The Kentucky Supreme Court later specifically noted that Stewart subsequently died in an unrelated incident before the criminal case stemming from the 2019 attack went to trial, confirming that his December 2020 killing was a separate event.
The 2019 case eventually resulted in criminal proceedings against Shakkory Willis and others, but those proceedings concerned the attack that killed Thomas and wounded Stewart, not Stewart's later homicide. Willis was convicted of first-degree robbery, first-degree burglary, and second-degree unlawful transaction with a minor and received a 33-year prison sentence; a jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on the murder charge involving Thomas. Nothing in those proceedings identified Willis or the other participants in the 2019 crime as responsible for Stewart's December 2020 death.
In the immediate aftermath of Stewart's killing, police reported that no arrest had been made. Investigators appealed to the public for information and asked anyone who knew something about the homicide to contact authorities. The publicly available online reporting located for this synopsis does not identify a person who was subsequently arrested, charged, tried, or convicted specifically for Stewart's December 22, 2020 killing. As a result, the available record leaves the circumstances leading up to the shooting, the identity of the person responsible, and the motive publicly unresolved.
