Nicholaus D. Scroggins II was a 14-year-old Black male from Fort Wayne, Indiana, whose life ended in the dark hours of June 21, 2016, when gunfire cut through a southeast-side neighborhood and left him in the street on the 5200 block of Lillie Street. Neighbors reported hearing shots and calling 911, and when officers arrived they found him down in the roadway with multiple gunshot wounds, unresponsive.
He was rushed to a hospital, but he did not survive, and detectives worked a scene marked by violence so close to home that nearby houses were found with bullet damage.
In the days that followed, the killing was discussed against the backdrop of a tense stretch of shootings in Fort Wayne, with police publicly weighing whether the flare-up of gun violence at the time might be tied to gang activity. The early-morning timing, the location, and the rapid succession of incidents made the case feel like part of something larger—yet the people who knew him were left staring at a single, devastating absence.
What made the case even more haunting was the sense that the moments before the shooting may have been captured. Later reporting described home surveillance footage that showed a man approaching the front door, and then walking away with Nicholaus before the fatal gunfire erupted around the corner from where he lived. His mother released the grainy video in the hope that someone, somewhere, would recognize the figure and finally give investigators the missing name. At that point, police acknowledged they had the footage, but the reporting noted there had still been no arrest.
Away from the crime scene tape, tributes painted a picture of a kid with energy and promise—someone who threw himself into school and sports, who could be counted on by friends, and who was proud of what he could do. An obituary described him as a student at Miami Middle School who did well academically and even tutored other students, with a deep love of sports—especially football and basketball—and a knack for fixing things at home, always looking for something to build, repair, or figure out.
As for suspects and arrests, publicly available summaries from a nonprofit case-listing site have characterized the killing as involving two perpetrators and have named several individuals only by first name and last initial as “persons of interest.” Those identifications are presented there as leads for tips rather than as confirmed charges, and the same listing describes the case as still open. In the sources available online here, no publicly documented arrest, charge filing, trial, or conviction for Nicholaus D. Scroggins II’s homicide is reported.
