In the late hours of a Sunday evening in Gary, Indiana, the life of 21-year-old Marcelis Stevenson was tragically cut short. On January 12, 2020, police responded to a report of a vehicle that had struck a tree at 35th and Fillmore around 10:45 p.m. First responders found Stevenson in the driver's seat and paramedics attempted to revive him, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Initially, the incident appeared to be a fatal car crash.
However, upon further examination, it was discovered that Stevenson had sustained a gunshot wound. This revelation shifted the investigation from a traffic accident to a homicide. The coroner subsequently ruled that the gunshot was the cause of his death, which led to the crash. The Gary Police Metro Homicide Unit took over the investigation, seeking information from the public to piece together the events that led to the shooting.
In March 2020, a significant development occurred in the case when authorities charged 17-year-old Melvin M. Brown with murder for the death of Marcelis Stevenson. At the time the charges were announced, Brown was already in custody. He had been implicated in a separate and unrelated fatal shooting of a pizza delivery driver that had occurred in October of the previous year. Brown, along with another teenager, faced charges of murder, armed robbery, and theft in that case.
