Richard Bangura was 18 when he was shot on the evening of August 9, 2020, on the 2400 block of Franklin Street NE in the Langdon neighborhood of Northeast Washington, D.C. Officers found him inside a vehicle with a gunshot wound; he was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries and died on August 16, 2020, the same day he had been scheduled to leave for Temple University. His death was recorded as resulting from that gunshot wound.

Bangura had graduated from Dunbar High School and planned to study criminal justice at Temple, aiming ultimately for a law degree. His family and community remembered him as someone who had turned away from earlier violence, surviving a previous shooting as a teenager, mentoring others, participating in a law camp at D.C. District Court, and speaking out against gun violence.

In the weeks after the killing, the Metropolitan Police Department’s Homicide Branch circulated reward flyers offering up to $25,000 for information. On October 20, 2021, pursuant to a D.C. Superior Court custody order, police arrested a 16-year-old juvenile from Northeast D.C. and charged him with first-degree murder while armed; authorities did not release the juvenile’s name or detail a motive. Detectives continued to invite tips from anyone with information. Did anyone in the neighborhood or who knew Richard see or hear anything that night that could help investigators?