Seven murders go unsolved in 2016
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on December 31, 2016 2:28 PM
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News-Argus/SETH COMBS
A memorial to 19-year-old Atiya Tijonna Maddox at the corner of Olivia Lane and Slaughter Street has grown in size since her death July 22. Maddox was shot and killed at the intersection. Her murder is one of seven that remain unsolved in 2016.
More than half of all homicides that took place inside the city limits this year remain unsolved, and police have little to work with to aid their investigations.
Goldsboro Police Chief Mike West said there is no new information on the seven of 11 homicides in 2016 that remain unsolved.
The overall homicide rate in 2016 was the highest the city has seen since 2012, when there were 13 killings. After a sharp decline in 2013, with only five homicides recorded, the murder rate has steadily risen.
For three of 2016's unsolved murders -- those of 19-year-old Atiya Tijonna Maddox, 17-year-old Montez Lamar Wilson and 32-year-old Ryan Apollo Morgan -- all came in July and makeshift memorials still stand at the sites of their respective slayings.
"If there (were) any three cases you could look at from the outside looking in that says these truly were three victims that were innocent, didn't have a bad background or anything, these are the three," West said.
Maddox was shot and killed at the intersection of Olivia Lane and Slaughter Street on July 22, just after 1 p.m.
Police were originally considering the theory that Maddox was shot inside a vehicle after a second vehicle began shooting at the car she was in.
West said police have not been able to firm up that theory five months later.
"We have not confirmed that there was a second vehicle involved," West said.
In addition to eyewitness accounts, police also have now confirmed they pulled video footage from Wayne Memorial Hospital of Maddox's arrival in a private vehicle after she was shot, but it did not help them develop any new leads, West said.
Maddox's murder is similar to another killing that happened earlier in the summer -- but in that case, an arrest was made shortly after the slaying.
Michael Jerome Wimbush Jr., 19, was shot and killed on the opposite end of Lincoln Homes from where Maddox was killed, in the 900 block of Carver Drive.
In both cases, the killings happened in the afternoon and in the same area. They happened less than a month apart, and only several blocks apart.
Jacques Torraine Atkinson, 18, of 808 S. Best St., turned himself in for Wimbush's murder and was arrested and charged within less than 24 hours.
With Maddox, nobody has come forward.
West said in situations like these that seem so similar, the key to the crime being solved or remaining unsolved is community cooperation on all fronts.
"I wish I knew why. I don't know why you've got certain people that are more cooperative than others," West said. "This is stuff we deal with all the time. It's frustrating for us. You pull up on the scene of any kind of crime and you've got 20 people on the scene standing out there telling you what occurred, but then when you ask them if they saw who did it, their answer is they saw nothing. A lot of that is that people don't want to get involved because they don't want to be the next victim."
Wilson was shot and killed in the 400 block of East Holly Street in the early hours of July 1.
A memorial for him still stands where he was shot and killed, much like the memorial dedicated to Maddox and Morgan.
According to a neighbor who lives near the spot where Wilson died, Wilson's mother visited the memorial several months ago.
Speaking anonymoulsy for safety, she said she moved to the neighborhood in August.
and that people in the neighborhood still talk about Wilson, sharing nothing but fond memories.
"They talk about how they knew him and how he was just a good person," she said.
Several paper cups that used to spell out "Tez" in the fence are now tattered and worn. Some cups are strung about the ground. Stuffed animals -- weather worn -- remain on the ground where police found Wilson's body.
Several American flags are stuck in the ground at Wilson's memorial, also, much like the ones on the 100 block of North Center Street that stand as a memorial for Morgan.
Nobody has come forward with information in either case.
Despite Morgan being shot and killed in the middle of downtown Goldsboro on a busy night with people around, police have little to work with, West said.
"I think surprisingly enough there wasn't any eyewitnesses to the actual incident," West said. "I think it was there was witnesses to the fact that something occurred, they were out and about downtown, they heard it, but I don't think we had any witnesses that physically saw the actual incident. I don't think there was an actual eyewitness of the actual incident taking place."
There are cameras downtown, but West said they did not capture Morgan's death. Police do not know how many people might have been involved in the airman's killing.
"There were no cameras in the vicinity of the incident. I think the camera that we relied on was the one that was up by City Hall that was pointed south, so it would have given you an overview of the whole block," West said. "But with the way it was pointed and the distance, the incident was kind of covered by some awnings and the positioning of some vehicles, so we really never had actual footage of the incident."
He said the distance, because the cameras were not put up for security surveillance but rather to show the progress of Streetscape, the resolution from that distance isn't really what police needed it to be to see what happened.
With all three murders from July that remain unsolved, West said he does not believe there is a cause pointing to why their blood was shed by whomever killed them.
"These three I don't think were specifically targeted for this," West said. "I don't believe that."
The other four murders that remain unsolved in 2016, however -- those of 27-year-old Julius Isaiah Bryant, 21-year-old Versean Jenkins, 21-year-old Shai Taylor Valentine and 32-year-old Antonio Montrell Moore -- West said police have reason to believe the bullets that struck them were meant for them.
"Those four seem like they were targeted," West said.
But, West said, police do not know exactly who would have targeted those four victims.
"They've probably got some elements of (being) gang-related," West said. "I don't think it's a specific gang out targeting another gang saying I'm going to shoot and kill you because you're an opposing gang member. I think it's that they are on opposing gangs and there's been a history between the individuals and there was a beef and that's why they were targeted."
With around half of the unsolved murders that happened this year having the possibility of being gang-related, West said the police department is working to get ahead of a problem he admits has gotten out of hand throughout the years.
"I guess we could make the correlation that the gangs are more active, or the gangs are a little more than what we had led the public to believe," West said. "And unfortunately we're finding this out ever since we put the gang unit together and we're running down leads and validating gang members and seeing what we have -- yeah, it's a problem that we probably, and I hate to say this, it's a problem we probably should have paid attention to a while back. We didn't and it's gotten away from us and it's gotten ahead of us."
The Goldsboro Police Department's gang unit now has two officers, upgraded from just one who was able to identify 254 gang members operating in the city with the help of probation and parole in his first six months on the job.
Going forward, West said the police department hopes to implement new strategies to solve cases with more manpower and new techniques and technology.
One of those strategies is to allow other investigators to go over cases assigned to other investigators and look at it with a fresh set of eyes.
"Maj. (Anthony) Carmon has gone back to about 2007, and we've pulled all the homicide files that we've got with the open cases that are still active, and they're actually going to move them from the investigator that's currently got it and give it to another investigator and have him go through it with a fresh set of eyes," West said.
This does not mean a new investigator will be assigned to the case, but rather that more than one person will be digging through the details and asking questions about what happened.
While this does not immediately help the families of the victims of 2016's murders, West said he hopes 2017 will be a year with many more resolved murder cases.
"Somebody's going to come forward at some point in time," West said.