Eighteen-year-old Koreena Ramos, a Caucasian female, was found deceased on October 13, 2016, in Gary, Indiana, alongside her boyfriend, Zantrell Collins. The discovery was made by employees of the Family Food Discount store, locally known as the 'red store,' located on East 49th Avenue. As the owners were closing for the night, they noticed a silver Chevrolet parked in the lot containing the unresponsive couple.
Both teenagers had sustained multiple gunshot wounds, and the Lake County Coroner’s Office subsequently ruled their deaths as homicides.
For years, the investigation into the double homicide faced significant hurdles, including a lack of reliable witnesses and leads that ultimately reached dead ends. Detectives navigated through various false tips, including accounts from individuals who could not identify a suspect in a lineup. The case remained cold until investigators received information from a prison inmate and former associate of the alleged shooter. In April 2020, authorities formally charged William Dejuan Antonio Galloway with the murders. Galloway, who was twenty-seven at the time of the charges, had already been taken into custody by U.S. Marshals in November 2019 on unrelated warrants for attempted murder and escape from home detention.
The break in the case came primarily from the testimony of Nicholas Pelissier, who was incarcerated at the Wabash Valley Correctional Center. Pelissier told detectives that he was present at the scene on the night of the shooting. He described watching Galloway fire into the vehicle, pause to wipe his face, and then resume shooting. This account, along with other gathered intelligence, led prosecutors to believe they had solved the crime. At the time of the new charges, Galloway was already facing a lengthy prison term for a separate violent incident in November 2016 involving the death of another individual.
Despite the initial breakthrough and the charges filed against Galloway, the legal proceedings took a different turn years later. In August 2024, prosecutors moved to dismiss the murder charges related to Ramos and Collins, citing insufficient evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. While the charges for the deaths of Koreena Ramos and Zantrell Collins were dropped, Galloway remained incarcerated, serving a fifty-five-year sentence for a separate conviction handed down in 2021.
