Thirteen-year-old Dante Evans Brown of Cincinnati, Ohio, was shot and killed on June 8, 1980, while walking to a store to buy candy with his 14-year-old cousin, Darrell Lane. The boys were struck by gunfire from a sniper on Reading Road; Dante died at the scene and Darrell was critically injured but survived. The case remained unsolved for many years until 1997, when Joseph Paul Franklin confessed to shooting the boys from atop a train trestle and was later prosecuted in Cincinnati for their murders. Franklin had an extensive criminal history that emerged during the trial.

Dante’s death devastated his family and the Cincinnati community and became part of a larger pattern of racially motivated violence connected to Franklin. Anyone who remembers Dante, Darrell, or that stretch of Reading Road in 1980, or who has information about the shooting, is asked to come forward.