Darien Leigh Richardson, 25, was sleeping in her Portland, Maine apartment on Rackleff Street with her boyfriend on January 8, 2010, when intruders burst in and opened fire into their bedroom. Richardson was hit in the left hand and right leg, and a bullet lodged in her hip. She spent two days in intensive care and 18 days hospitalized before being released to recover. On February 28, 2010, she died unexpectedly from a blood clot that formed as a complication of her gunshot wounds.

Investigators later recovered the handgun used in the shooting at the scene of an unrelated murder in February 2010; ballistic testing linked that weapon to the bullet in Richardson’s hip. The gun was traced to its original legal purchaser, who had sold it privately at a gun show to an unknown buyer, leaving that trail cold. Police have focused suspicion on Richardson’s boyfriend, Cory Girard, citing his alleged role in trafficking OxyContin between New York and Maine; authorities say Girard’s gun was not the murder weapon. Girard was later arrested on a federal firearms charge and pleaded guilty in 2015, but no one has been officially named as a suspect in Richardson’s homicide. Her family is offering a $15,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction.