At midday on Thursday, August 22, 2019, a call brought Richmond police to a house in the 2000 block of Albany Avenue on the city’s south side. Inside the home, they found 54-year-old Clarence Martin with a gunshot wound, and he was pronounced dead at the scene minutes after officers arrived.
In the hours that followed, investigators treated the shooting as a death investigation centered on what had happened within the home and the people closest to the moment it unfolded.
Detectives spoke with the parties involved early on, and police said they did not believe there was an ongoing threat to the community as the case moved into its next phase.
Public updates at the time did not name any suspect or describe an arrest connected to the killing, leaving the story of who fired the shot—and why—still out of view. Police asked anyone with information to contact a major crimes detective or report tips through Crime Stoppers, signaling that they were still piecing together the events that led to the gunfire inside the residence.
Away from the crime-scene tape and the urgent radio traffic of that afternoon, an obituary notice identified him as Clarence “Buck” Martin and said he died at his home in Richmond. It also described him as being born August 11, 1965, in Northampton County, North Carolina, the son of Clarence Williams and the late Gloria Martin.
