Francesca Harris-Scarborough, 31, a Black woman from Richmond, Virginia, was found dead in the early morning of April 9, 2020, slumped inside a vehicle on the 3400 block of Blakey Street in the city’s East End. Police were called around 6:50 a.m., and when officers arrived they found her in the car suffering from an apparent gunshot wound; she was pronounced dead at the scene.
To her family, the shock wasn’t just the suddenness of it, but the way the day began like any other—until it didn’t. In later accounts, her mother described learning the news after her morning routine, when police contacted her and told her her youngest daughter had been killed. Investigators and relatives said the car was still running when she was discovered, as if whatever happened had ended quickly and violently, leaving a scene that felt frozen in time.
As her loved ones struggled to grieve in the isolation of the pandemic, they also tried to fill in the blanks: where she had been headed, who had been with her, and why she ended up on a residential street far from the safety of home. Her brothers spoke publicly about the pain of losing her and pleaded for anyone with information to come forward. Family members also said she was pregnant at the time she was killed—an added loss that turned their grief into something even heavier, the future stolen alongside her.
Two months later, investigators announced an arrest. Everett L. Bolling, Jr., of Chesterfield was taken into custody and charged with first-degree murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. Police did not publicly disclose a motive at the time or detail the evidence that led them to him, but the announcement offered the family a moment of fragile hope that the case was moving toward accountability.
That hope unraveled in court the following year. Reporting on the trial described prosecutors alleging a premeditated killing, while the defense challenged whether the evidence truly tied Bolling to the shooting. After a weeklong trial, a Richmond jury found him not guilty on March 12, 2021, and he was released. Accounts of the case said DNA testing established he was the father of her unborn child, but other key pieces were disputed or missing—among them, a firearm that was never recovered, video described as too grainy to identify the killer, and DNA evidence from the vehicle that reportedly did not match him.
In the years since, her name has remained a wound and a rallying cry for the people who loved her. Her family has spoken about channeling their loss into prevention and outreach, describing her as someone who deserved more time and more chances than she was given. Publicly available reporting does not describe any subsequent arrests or convictions for her killing after the acquittal, leaving the question of who pulled the trigger—if it wasn’t the man once charged—still hanging over Blakey Street and everyone who has waited for answers.
