On February 20, 2023, at about 11:45 p.m., Cincinnati police answered reports of a shooting in the 2900 block of Reading Road in the Avondale neighborhood. Officers found 28-year-old Terrance Bartlett with a gunshot wound; he was taken to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center and died the next day. The Cincinnati Police Department’s Homicide Unit opened an investigation.

On March 21, 2023, 41-year-old Thomas Kirkland was arrested in Las Vegas in connection with Bartlett’s fatal shooting. The arrest involved the Las Vegas Police Department, the U.S. Marshals Service, and Cincinnati’s Fugitive Apprehension Squad; Kirkland was held at the Clark County Detention Center awaiting extradition to Ohio. Police have not released a motive or details about what led to the shooting. Bartlett’s family had already suffered a prior loss when his younger sister, 17-year-old Aurora McCarter, was fatally shot in Cincinnati’s Price Hill neighborhood in 2020.

Anyone with information about Bartlett’s death is asked to contact the Cincinnati Police Department’s Homicide Unit.