On the evening of February 19, 2025, 36-year-old Dewayne Franklin Jr., a Black man known to friends and family as Poppa, was found at a Hot Springs residence with a gunshot wound to his upper torso. He was taken to CHI St. Vincent Hospital but died of his injuries in the early hours of February 20, 2025.

Franklin Jr. is remembered as a devoted father to his son, Dewayne Franklin III, a music enthusiast and a former competitive athlete who loved basketball. Hot Springs detectives arrested 46-year-old Jerry Wayne Burks Jr. in connection with the shooting; Burks Jr. was charged with first-degree domestic battery and possession of a firearm by a certain person. Authorities have not released the motive or described the relationship between Burks and Franklin Jr.

Did anyone who knew Dewayne or who was in that neighborhood the night of February 19 see or hear anything that could help investigators?