Dennis “Bo” Lee III was a 26-year-old Black man from Pontiac, Michigan. In the early morning hours of August 25, 2019, he was on the porch of an apartment on Whittemore Street with his cousin when a figure came out of the dark and walked straight toward them. As the man closed the distance, his cousin recognized him as Lewis Terrelle McNeir—his own half-brother—and tried to speak to him.
The encounter turned tense in seconds, and then violent: McNeir pulled out a gun and shot Lee in the chest. Lee spun and ran for the doorway, but another shot struck him in the back as he fled inside.
A frantic 911 call brought deputies to the 700 block of Whittemore Street, where they found Lee collapsed in the doorway with gunshot wounds to his torso. A witness told investigators the shooter had approached and fired three or four times with a black-and-silver semiautomatic handgun before running off. Lee was rushed to McLaren Oakland Hospital, but he was pronounced dead there a short time later.
In the immediate aftermath, the truth came out in pieces. Lee’s cousin gave police a description and the clothing he’d seen, but at first refused to name the shooter. After family members gathered and the shock began to harden into certainty, he disclosed that McNeir was the one who fired the shots. Lee’s mother, Tameka Lee, also went to police after relatives told her who they believed was responsible, and her son’s cousin later identified McNeir as the shooter during a follow-up interview.
Another witness told detectives she had been with Lee shortly before he was killed and urged them to pull surveillance video from a nearby Sunoco. The footage helped police trace a car that appeared to follow Lee back toward Whittemore Street, and that trail led them to Dajhauh Brown, who testified that McNeir was her live-in boyfriend at the time. She said he had driven her car to the Sunoco after 4 a.m., later left with the car, then met her at a hotel that afternoon; after staying the night, she dropped him at a bus station because he said he needed to go to Atlanta. According to the record, McNeir’s father—living in Georgia—contacted Brown and directed her to deliver money he sent for a lawyer.
By August 29, authorities publicly identified McNeir and said the prosecutor’s office had issued charges that included first-degree premeditated murder, warning that he was considered armed and dangerous. The next day, police said he surrendered at the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office. He was arraigned on charges that included first-degree premeditated murder, being a felon in possession of a firearm, and felony-firearm counts tied to the shooting.
The case ultimately went to a jury trial, where McNeir was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder, felon-in-possession, and two felony-firearm counts. He was sentenced as a habitual offender to life in prison for the murder conviction, along with additional terms and mandatory firearm penalties; state records list him as a prisoner serving a life sentence in Michigan. On appeal, the Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions, leaving the verdict—and Lee’s killing—fixed in the record.
