In the early morning hours of March 8, 2025, Benny Wright, a 41-year-old Black man, was shot on the 1800 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard near West 35th Street in Savannah, Georgia. He was taken to a local hospital and pronounced dead. The shooting was one of several violent incidents that weekend that left three people dead and two others injured.

Savannah police arrested 21-year-old Nathaniel Leonard Lewis and charged him with murder. Investigators said Wright and Lewis did not know each other before that morning; surveillance footage showed the two men meeting, walking together, getting into an argument, and then gunfire. Prosecutors introduced a 9mm handgun, shell casings, surveillance video, and a bullet recovered from Wright’s body. Lewis testified he acted in self-defense, saying Wright had yelled at, threatened, and moved toward him, but the jury rejected that claim.

At sentencing Benny Wright’s older brother, Gary Wright, addressed the court and described the family’s losses, including their mother’s death from cardiac arrest six months after Benny’s killing. Anyone who knew Benny, his movements that morning, or who has information about the shooting is asked to come forward.