Damonte Hardrick

Damonte Hardrick was a 17-year-old Black male who his mother described as a great kid with a great spirit. The oldest of her children, Damonte was a good student who played basketball and football and dreamed of becoming an engineer. He was a student at Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, having previously attended Carrick High School. On the evening of Monday, February 13, 2023, he had just finished his schoolwork and went to visit a friend’s house in his Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, neighborhood of Carrick.

A little after 10 p.m., while Damonte was inside the residence on Parkfield Street, at least two shots were fired from outside the building. One bullet penetrated a wall and struck Damonte in the head. First responders found him deceased inside a bedroom. Several other people were in the home at the time but were not injured. Family members later said they believed Damonte was an innocent victim who did not know his killer and was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The investigation quickly led police to a suspect: 14-year-old Nigel Thompson. At the time of the shooting, Thompson was on juvenile probation for prior theft and assault charges and was required to wear a GPS ankle monitor. Investigators used the data from the monitor, which pinged his location every thirty seconds, to trace his path from his home to the scene of the shooting and back again. The route, which took about 14 minutes, matched surveillance footage that captured a figure jogging toward the residence, two muzzle flashes, and the figure running away.

Two days after the shooting, on February 15, 2023, Nigel Thompson turned himself in to authorities. He was charged as an adult with criminal homicide, discharge of a firearm into an occupied structure, and other firearms violations, and was held in the Allegheny County Jail. At a subsequent court hearing, prosecutors presented the GPS map and surveillance footage as evidence against him.

Thompson’s defense attorney filed a motion to have his case transferred from adult court to juvenile court. During a hearing on the matter, prosecutors argued that Thompson’s behavior was escalating and that the juvenile system did not have enough time to rehabilitate him. Damonte’s mother gave emotional testimony, pleading with the judge to keep the case in adult court, stating that the potential sentence in the juvenile system was not enough justice for her son.

In April 2024, Senior Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Kim Berkeley Clark ruled that Thompson’s charges would be transferred to juvenile court. The decision, which angered Damonte’s family, means that if Thompson is found to have killed Damonte, he can only remain in custody until he turns 21. As of that ruling, the case is proceeding within the juvenile justice system.