Orenthean Daniels

The summer of 2017 was meant to be a beginning for Orenthean Daniels. The 18-year-old, a native of New Orleans, had graduated from Tara High School just two months earlier and was looking toward a future he had been dreaming of. Known affectionately to friends and family as "Rent" or "Rentegade," Orenthean was a young man of ambition and varied interests. He played on a BREC basketball team called the Wolfpack and held down a job for over a year at a local Mooyah Burgers, Fries, & Shakes. His ultimate aspiration was to attend Ohio State University and become a Marine Biologist, a dream that spoke to a world of possibility far beyond the city limits. He was born on August 8, 1998, to LaDridca and Orethean Morgan.

That future came to an abrupt and violent end on Sunday, July 30, 2017. On that day in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Orenthean, a young African American man, met with another teenager, 19-year-old Kenyi Kolok. According to the Baton Rouge Police Department, the meeting was arranged for a drug transaction. What exactly transpired between the two remains a question locked in the silence of that encounter, but the outcome was devastating. The deal turned into a shooting, and when the violence subsided, both young men were dead. The life that had just recently been celebrated with a high school diploma was extinguished just nine days before his nineteenth birthday.

The deaths of Orenthean and Kenyi became part of a grim, record-setting statistic for East Baton Rouge Parish. The year 2017 was marked by a surge in violence, ending as the deadliest year for homicides in the parish in over a decade, with some counts putting the total number of killings at 104. July, the month Orenthean died, was particularly violent, with 13 homicides recorded by the city's police department, the highest of any month that year. The incident occurred in the Melrose East neighborhood, a community struggling with high rates of violent and property crime, poverty, and urban blight. It is a working-class area of mid-century homes and apartment complexes where residents have worked to establish a crime prevention district to improve safety.

In the wake of the double homicide, the Baton Rouge Police Department's Homicide Unit launched an investigation into the senseless act of violence. As detectives pieced together the events of that fatal Sunday, their work began to yield results. The community was left to mourn yet another young life lost, while a family prepared to say goodbye to a son, grandson, and brother. His loved ones remembered a vibrant young man, leaving behind his grandmother, two siblings, and a host of aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends who would miss the promise of "Rentegade." His funeral was held on a Saturday morning in August at the Second Rose of Sharon Baptist Church in New Orleans, and he was laid to rest in Resthaven Memorial Park.

The investigation into Orenthean Daniels' death did not go cold. The efforts of law enforcement led to a significant breakthrough in the case. Detectives were able to identify and apprehend four main suspects connected to the shooting. One of the individuals taken into custody was 22-year-old Kendrick Profit, who was subsequently charged in connection with the killings. The arrests brought a measure of resolution to the case, ensuring that the deaths of Orenthean and Kenyi would not remain another unsolved file in a year filled with so much loss. Though the legal proceedings provided a form of justice, they could not restore the future that was stolen from a recent high school graduate who dreamed of studying life in the oceans.