On the evening of October 15, 2022, Betty Jean Averytt, 59, known to many as Beautiful Brown Betty, was waiting at a bus stop on Cedar Avenue in Pittsburgh when a shootout nearby caught her in the crossfire and she was killed. She was an innocent bystander; the same incident also killed 33-year-old Jacquelyn Mehalic and 20-year-old John Hornezes Jr. Investigators concluded Hornezes was one of the shooters and initially described the violence as related to gang activity, a characterization later qualified to mean loosely affiliated groups rather than traditional gangs.

Several arrests followed. Jaylone D. Hines, 21, was charged with two counts of criminal homicide for the deaths of Averytt and Mehalic. Charron Troutman, 19, and Samuel Pegues, 30, were also taken into custody; homicide charges against Troutman and Pegues were dropped in January 2023 after autopsy findings about bullet trajectories, though they faced other charges including attempted homicide and aggravated assault. The community lost a mother and grandmother in a public place; what led to the shootout beyond a dispute at a nearby gas station remains a key question for anyone with information.