Detroit Police Officer Donald O. Kimbrough was shot on August 25, 1972, while on plainclothes patrol with a partner near the intersection of Belmont Street and Woodward Avenue. Officers had responded to reports of two men shooting at people near a methadone clinic. As they confronted an armed man emerging from an alley, a second man in a nearby car opened fire and struck Kimbrough in the chest; the first suspect then grabbed a shotgun and fired at the partner. Both officers returned fire and the two men fled in the vehicle.

The bullet lodged against Kimbrough’s spine, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. He returned to limited duty before medically retiring in 1977 and lived with complications from the injury for decades. On December 7, 2017, he died of ulcers, infection, malnutrition, and septic shock the medical examiner attributed directly to the 1972 gunshot; the death was ruled a homicide. The two suspects have never been identified and no arrests were ever made.

Did anyone in Detroit in 1972 or later ever hear about the shooting near Belmont and Woodward, or know more about the two men or the car seen that day?