On the evening of December 13, 1992, 16-year-old Brandon Widener was shot and killed while driving his white Chevy El Camino through a K-Mart parking lot in Chino Hills, California. The shooting happened about 7:00 PM; Brandon was struck by gunfire believed to have come from someone inside the vehicle, described as a passenger. He managed to exit the car and run several feet before collapsing at the store entrance and died at the scene.

The shooter fled in the vehicle, which was found abandoned in a residential neighborhood in Chino Hills a few days later. Brandon had lost his mother to cancer six months earlier and was only weeks away from his 17th birthday on December 25. Investigators recovered the car but reported few substantial leads, and the case remained unsolved and treated as a cold case by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.

Anyone who knew Brandon or has information about the shooting is asked to contact the Sheriff’s Homicide Detail.