In the pre-dawn hours of September 20, 2015, gunfire outside the Ingersoll Houses in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, killed three men. Lacount Simmons, 39 and a resident of the housing complex known to some as Kojack, was shot multiple times in the head, back, and torso and was pronounced dead at the scene. Calvin Lamont Clinkscales, 43, was also killed; 76-year-old Herbert Brown, a bystander, was shot in the abdomen and later died at a hospital.

Surveillance footage showed a man fleeing after the shooting. An anonymous tip led police to Fayetteville, North Carolina, where Allen Cooper was arrested on April 22, 2016 and later extradited to Brooklyn. Prosecutors described the motive as a dispute over drug territory and said Simmons and Clinkscales were the intended targets. Family and friends remembered Simmons as kind and a role model; his survivors had to raise funds for his burial.