An evening meant for celebration ended in tragedy on July 2, 2019, in Worcester when 18-year-old Tafar Lewis, a Black / African American male known by his stage name June Valentino, was shot on Gage Street near the city’s Fourth of July festivities. Witnesses heard multiple shots around 10:25 p.m.; neighbors found Lewis wounded on the street and tried to control his bleeding until he was taken to a hospital, where he died.

Lewis had graduated from the Gerald Creamer Center two weeks earlier and was remembered by family and friends as kind, funny, and passionate about writing and recording music; he also enjoyed playing basketball. Police investigated and looked into a possible connection to a shooting about half an hour later on Shrewsbury and Lyon streets in which a 19-year-old man was wounded, but no definitive link has been announced. No arrests or publicly identified suspects have been reported and the homicide remains unsolved.

Did anyone in Worcester who knew Tafar or saw the area that night notice anything that could help investigators?