Early on March 28, 2023, 13-year-old Buddy Brown Jr., a seventh-grade student at W.S. Hornsby Middle School, was fatally shot outside his family’s Richmond Summit Apartments building on Broad Street in Augusta, Georgia. Just after midnight he went downstairs to pick up a DoorDash delivery from a nearby McDonald’s; he did not return. Deputies on patrol heard a gunshot around 3 a.m. and found Buddy unresponsive outside the apartment; he was pronounced dead at the scene after sustaining at least one gunshot wound.

Buddy’s family described him as a joyful, loving boy who liked video games and spending time with them and later held a balloon release asking for justice and an end to gun violence. Authorities identified two suspects, 30-year-old Gregory Louis Thornton and Tia Shante Jackson. Thornton, a Baltimore resident believed to have been staying in Augusta, fled and was arrested by U.S. Marshals in Fayetteville, Pennsylvania, on May 3, 2023, then extradited back to Augusta in early June to face charges of murder, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Jackson was taken into custody in West Virginia in April 2023 and faces murder and other charges. The motive has not been publicly released.

Did anyone who knew Buddy or who was in that neighborhood on March 28, 2023, see anything that could help the investigation?