Brian Ruffin

Brian Darrell Ruffin, a 36-year-old Black man from Beckley, West Virginia, was a father to a son and a daughter. His life was tragically cut short in the days leading up to Christmas in 2020.

On the evening of December 22, 2020, at approximately 10:30 p.m., officers with the Beckley Police Department were dispatched to an apartment complex at 106 Pershing Avenue following a report of shots fired. At the scene, they discovered Brian Ruffin suffering from a gunshot wound to his side. He was immediately taken to a local hospital for emergency medical care. Despite the efforts of hospital staff, Ruffin succumbed to his injuries two days later on December 24, 2020.

His death was officially ruled a homicide, launching an investigation by Beckley Police detectives. Their work quickly led them to a suspect, Tyajaha Robinson. Robinson was arrested and initially charged with malicious wounding. However, following Ruffin’s death, the charges against him were upgraded to first-degree murder. He was arraigned in Raleigh County Magistrate Court in January 2021 to face the new charge.

The legal proceedings concluded over a year later. In June 2022, Tyajaha Robinson pleaded guilty to a charge of second-degree murder for his role in Brian Ruffin's fatal shooting. As a result of the plea, he was sentenced to 40 years in prison. The Raleigh County Prosecuting Attorney acknowledged it had been a "very difficult case" but stated that the resolution secured a conviction and a "very lengthy prison sentence" in the interest of justice.

According to news reports from the previous year, Ruffin had been a person of interest in a separate criminal investigation. In October 2019, the Beckley Police Department had publicly identified him as the suspect in the robbery of a City National Bank, where an individual in a monkey mask had fled with over $6,000 after passing a demand note to a teller. With the conviction and sentencing of his killer, the homicide case of Brian Ruffin was closed in June 2022.