On the evening of January 2, 2020, 26-year-old Elijah Rahim Chavis was shot on Merrimac Drive in Portsmouth, Virginia. Emergency responders found him with a gunshot wound to his upper body just before 8:30 p.m.; he died at the scene. The shooting was recorded as the city’s second homicide of the new year.

Elijah was born June 10, 1993. Family and friends remember him as warm-hearted and family-oriented, a graduate of I.C. Norcom High School and a devoted father to his children, Emoni and Shaheem. The Portsmouth Police Department identified 28-year-old Deon Benson as a suspect; Benson later turned himself in and was charged with murder and the use of a firearm in the commission of a felony in connection with Chavis’s death.

Anyone who knew Elijah or who has information about the shooting on Merrimac Drive is asked to share what they remember with investigators.