On the evening of November 17, 2015, 23-year-old Javontae Gerald Bufford of Milwaukee was seated in his vehicle near North 76th Street and West Hampton Avenue when gunfire struck the car at about 9:30 p.m. He was found critically wounded in the driver’s seat after the vehicle had rolled backward and come to rest against a fence; emergency responders attempted lifesaving measures but he was pronounced dead at the scene. Milwaukee police opened a homicide investigation and recorded his death as the city’s 131st homicide of 2015.

Bufford’s mother, Raquel Russell, spoke publicly about her loss and established a memorial near North 25th Street and West Auer Avenue. Investigators later reported ballistic evidence that suggested the same two firearms might have been used in Bufford’s killing and two other November 2015 homicides, and that those guns surfaced during a violent Interstate 43 shootout on December 9, 2015. Jerome Johnson and Martez Maclin-Dyson were arrested in the freeway incident; authorities examined recovered weapons and obtained warrants to search phones, but the reports do not show any person charged specifically with Bufford’s murder.

Who knew Javontae or remembers seeing him in that neighborhood the night he was killed?