Seventeen-year-old Andre Lamont Hawkins Jr. was killed on the night of January 23, 2018, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He was sitting in the driver’s seat of a vehicle on Second Street NW, trying to start it, when the ex-boyfriend of a young woman he was with approached armed with a handgun. The 22-year-old, identified as Vicente Rodriguez Ortiz, opened fire into the vehicle and fatally struck Andre.

Grand Rapids police located Ortiz the next afternoon after a brief chase near Bridge Street and Lane Avenue NW, a few blocks from the shooting. Officers captured him with the assistance of a police dog. During his arraignment for Andre’s murder, Ortiz referenced another homicide investigation; he was also identified as a suspect in the March 2017 shooting death of 50-year-old Laurie Lundeberg.

In April 2019 Ortiz received a mandatory life sentence without parole for the first-degree murder of Andre Hawkins and 35 to 75 years for the second-degree murder of Laurie Lundeberg. Does anyone have additional information about Andre’s life in Grand Rapids or was in the area that night?