Nathaniel Allen Trapp, 41, a Black man from Richmond, Virginia, died on November 14, 2021, after a late-night shooting on the city’s Northside. Near the end of the evening, police were called to the 800 block of Cheatwood Avenue, in the Washington Park neighborhood, after reports of gunfire. When officers arrived, they found him wounded and rushed him to a local hospital, but he did not survive.
In the hours and days that followed, the case settled into the slow, uncertain rhythm that so many shootings do: a stretch of unanswered questions, a crime scene that had already gone quiet, and detectives trying to reconstruct what happened from fragments—who was there, what was seen, what was heard, what might have been captured on a doorbell camera or a nearby surveillance system. Police said the Medical Examiner would determine the official cause and manner of death, and investigators asked anyone with information to come forward, directing tips to Major Crimes Detective M. Young and to Crime Stoppers.
Public updates available online do not identify a suspect, name a person of interest, or describe a motive. In those same publicly available reports and police releases, there is no announcement of an arrest or criminal charges connected to his death, leaving the story with a stark open ending: a life lost on a residential block, and an investigation still asking the community to fill in the missing pieces.
Away from the crime-scene details, the obituary published in Richmond described a person remembered for warmth rather than headlines—someone whose smile could brighten “the darkest room,” generous, loving, and quick with humor. He was born April 14, 1980, and the family he left behind was large and close-knit: his wife, LaSharnda Trapp; children NaQuon Trapp and Jermia Mathews; a granddaughter, Miracle Mathews; his mother, Beatrice Trapp; his paternal grandmother, Florine Gaines; brothers and sisters; and a wide circle of nieces, nephews, relatives, and friends.
In late November, his loved ones gathered to mourn him and to remember him in the places that had held his everyday life. Viewing was scheduled at Scott’s Funeral Home on East Brookland Park Boulevard, with funeral services held at Scott’s Chapel on November 26, followed by interment at Washington Memorial Park. For the people closest to him, the dates and times were not just arrangements—they were the moments where grief became real, where stories were shared, and where the city’s unanswered questions collided with the simple, aching fact that he was gone.
