Justin Cedrick Dawson, a 25-year-old man from Fort Wayne, Indiana, was killed in the early morning hours of August 28, 2020, after gunfire broke the quiet on the 1000 block of Ridgewood Drive. Police were dispatched at about 4:10 a.m. for reports of shots fired, and while canvassing the area they found him lying near the street with multiple apparent gunshot wounds. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene, and the death was later ruled a homicide.
Investigators said a caller told dispatch they’d heard roughly five gunshots, and the scene sat just off Parnell Avenue near the Memorial Coliseum—an ordinary stretch of city made suddenly unfamiliar by flashing lights and taped-off pavement. As word spread, the case was taken up as a joint investigation involving the Fort Wayne Police Department, the Allen County Prosecutor’s Office, and the Allen County Coroner’s Office, and Dawson was counted among the county’s homicides for that year.
By that same day, grief turned into logistics. A GoFundMe fundraiser was organized to help his family cover funeral expenses, describing his death as “an act of senseless violence” and asking the community to keep the family in prayer. Public obituary listings recorded his birth date as March 13, 1995, and reflected arrangements through Nelson Memorial Gardens, including services scheduled for September 9, 2020, at the funeral home on Eliza Street in Fort Wayne.
In the public statements released around the time of the killing, authorities focused on the unanswered question of who pulled the trigger. They asked anyone with information to contact police or submit tips through Crime Stoppers, emphasizing that the investigation was active, but those releases did not name a suspect or announce an arrest connected to Dawson’s death.
