Dejuan Davis, a 21-year-old Black male from Detroit, Michigan, was killed in the first hours of New Year’s Day on January 1, 2017, when a night of celebrating spilled into violence on the city’s west side. Just after the clock had turned on a new year, friends and neighbors said people were still outside near a home in the 7000 block of Faust Street, close to Tireman Avenue, when gunfire suddenly tore through the quiet stretch of street.
Witnesses described hearing several shots—three to five in the chaos—and then seeing the older of the two victims, 39-year-old Lavar Edwards, sprint toward the house, bleeding heavily. In the scramble that followed, someone ran to a nearby home for help, and when they returned, a second person was found down as well—Davis. Both were pronounced dead at the scene.
As daylight arrived, the neighborhood’s grief sharpened into questions. Friends told reporters that the father and son were close, and people who knew them struggled to understand why they had been targeted outside a place that had felt like a safe end to a holiday gathering. In one account, a neighbor said Davis had been shot in the head and stomach, while Edwards had been hit in the arm and leg, details that made the scene feel even more brutal and immediate to those who were there.
Investigators, however, had little they could share publicly at the time. Detroit police said they did not have suspect information to release, and early reports did not name any arrested person connected to the killings. In the absence of official answers, people nearby tried to piece together fragments—one friend wondered aloud if the presence of two unidentified women seen with Edwards earlier that night might matter, but no names were provided and no public confirmation followed in those initial reports. Davis was remembered as a new father, leaving behind a baby daughter who was still an infant.
