Charles Edward Epps, a 68-year-old Black man, was killed in the early hours of December 19, 2016, after gunfire shattered the quiet on the 1800 block of Rayner Avenue in West Baltimore. Police were dispatched around 2:30 a.m. for a report of two unresponsive men. When officers arrived, they found the front door open and went inside, where two victims were suffering from gunshot wounds; both were pronounced dead at the scene.
In the first hours after the shooting, authorities described one victim only by age, calling him a 68-year-old man, while the other was described as much younger. The younger man was later identified in public reporting and victim lists as Anthony Lasalle Brown, 22, killed in the same incident at the same address. Outside the home, family members searched for answers through shock and grief, speaking of the kind of phone call that changes everything in an instant.
As detectives took over the scene, police said they had not determined a motive, and they leaned hard on the one thing investigations often need most at the start: someone willing to talk. The message from loved ones was raw and direct—if you know what happened, say something—because whoever pulled the trigger didn’t just take two lives, they left behind children, siblings, and a family bracing itself for the holidays with an empty space that couldn’t be explained away.
Public reports from the day of the killings centered on the discovery inside the home, the double-homicide classification, and pleas for tips to reach homicide detectives and Metro Crime Stoppers. In the same publicly available coverage and victim-list entries describing the Rayner Avenue shootings, no suspect was named and no arrest or criminal charge was announced in connection with the deaths.
