The call came out that shots had been fired. I was a new boot.
I was definitely a rookie, and for a rookie to kind of
walking into the unknown.
My body camera was already rolling.
My adrenaline was definitely rushing.
I was driving that night.
We call my field training officer.
He was sitting on the passenger side and basically was like,
"All right, it's your show. Let's go."
We turned down a residential street,
and we get out of the car. It was dead silent.
I could hear a car that was revving.
It was pretty eerie.
Go.
The car was still on.
I could see a Black male sitting in the driver's seat,
and I could see him convulsing.
And every time the male was convulsing,
the engine would rev.
Climbed in the passenger side seat.
He looked anywhere from 17 to 24, maybe.
I mean, he-- he was young.
I could see that he had a bullet hole to his head.
There was brain fragmentation coming out, blood coming out.
And at that time, I was basically face to face with, uh,
him and kind of saw his last breath.
And I kind of stepped back, uh, from there
and just kind of was like, "Oh, shit."
A field training officer tried to feel for a pulse,
and there wasn't one.
This was clearly a murder.
We're 10, 12, 15 minutes from Kentucky.
It wasn't odd that a Kentucky car was parked here.
We run a plate in our car.
We were able to pull up his driver's license,
and on his driver's license, it had his face, so.
Identified the driver of as, uh, 25-year-old Delvin Mitchell.
Dalvin was my best friend.
Technically, his name is Delvin, but he didn't really
like it that much, so he would tell us to call him Dalvin.
People loved him.
As soon as he walked in the room, like,
you're just gonna get that joy, that --
like, it's like this wind that comes over you.
Dalvin did a lot of music.
He never was really a rapper, but he was doing,
like, the-- the, like, the production of it.
He used to hang out at the house with my son, Blake.
My house used to be, like, a place where all
the boys would come to chill out.
So one day, Blake had come and sat down in my room
and asked me if Dalvin could stay with us, because he didn't
have nowhere to live.
First, I was kind of hesitant, because I always had
people there.
And then I told her yeah, then yeah, go ahead, we can.
Then, from there, me and Dalvin, you know, got us
a relationship as mom and son, and he just called me Mom.
Oh, he ended up becoming like my actual brother.
He went from a friend to a best friend,
close friend to a brother.
That's a whole different relationship dynamic.
OK?
That night, he got killed...
I was asleep.
They woke me up. Blake called me.
And told me that Dalvin was dead.
I think I just shut down altogether.
I just got numb.
I got a text message. It was like,
"There's like a Facebook status talking about there was
gunshots last night. Y'all be careful, y'all."
So, like, I don't know, my heart's like beating,
real, real fast.
And like, my whole, I like, fell to my knees because I had
a feeling that it was him.
And then by the time I got to the crib,
they-- they told me it was Dalvin.
I don't really remember too much of the conversation,
because I was like, all I seen was red.
Like-- like, who would hurt my brother?
Like, I don't know, I lost it.
For a long period of time, for real, I was, you know
what I mean, I was lost.
On scene, it was, you know, kind of that
tunnel vision to what we had in the car.
We crime scene off the entire area.
That's when the brigade of detectives,
detective sergeants, the crime scene guys,
started to pile in.
When I arrived on scene
and kind of processed that scene myself,
just looking at things,
seeing where, you know, there's a round laying there
on the street.
There's one in the floorboard.
The victim, Delvin, has been shot in the head.
You're kind of wondering, is this a setup?
We don't know.
There's all different kinds of scenarios as a detective that
you run through your head to try to get it figured out
as soon as you possibly can.
The driver's side window also had what was consistent to be
a projectile round through that.
The door was open, so it could lead to a couple different
things, but it looked like who had shot him was in the vehicle
or in close proximity to the vehicle when the shots
were fired.
The violence behind it was intentional.
And you could tell that just from the amount of rounds that
were sent through the car. It wasn't just to scare him.
It was to kill him.
Do a...
We don't have all the pieces to the puzzle yet.
It was one of those eye-opening experiences of,
"Hey, you know, we've got somebody we know that's shot,
but where's the shooter?"
As you're standing there, you're just, you're-- you'll...
you see this, you're...
you're asking yourself, "Why?"
And, you know, it's just a mystery.
Hear in my ear, dispatched had notified us that
a car was fleeing the area and other units
were trying to get behind it.
And as it was fleeing, they could see that the car had
false plates on it, possibly involved with the scene.
So hearing that in my ear, I'm thinking, "Hopefully we can
get this car stopped, figure out who's in the car."
Maybe they're involved with what happened here.
Officers are initiating their lights and sirens,
trying to get this guy to stop. Won't stop.
So now, in the back of everybody's mind,
they're thinking, "Maybe he's our suspect."
You know he's definitely not gonna stop.
It's just a straight adrenaline dump.
And it's-- it's just a rush.
Like, we have to get this car stopped at all costs.
And knowing that there's a possible gunman in this car
the level of threat just goes through the roof.
2 There was a vehicle pursuit.
We were trying to get the vehicle stopped,
and it wasn't stopping.
So we thought possibly could be involved,
because it's in the area. It's fleeing the area.
It could be a piece of the puzzle.
The sergeant or lieutenant at the time radioed and said,
"Other counties and state police are starting to
pick up on this pursuit."
So now they're pursuing the guy.
But they ended up stopping him and placed him in handcuffs.
We're thinking this might be our guy.
He had the false plates on his vehicle,
and they look suspicious.
I identified the guy as a subject named Simone.
And Simone was placed in one of our patrol vehicles,
and that patrol officer brought him to headquarters
for an interview.
You can tell a lot by interviewing subjects by
their disposition, how they act, how they talk.
Are they looking you in the eye?
Are they looking away?
Simone had some of those, but you're thinking,
"Well, this guy was right there,
and this guy fled the scene from there."
Simone basically told me that he had warrants.
He was scared.
Uh, he didn't want to go to jail.
You think, "Well, maybe they did flee
"because they have warrants.
Maybe-- maybe they have something else going on."
After we talked to him,
we got a-- a signed search warrant for his vehicle.
We couldn't find anything that would tie him to it.
So we released him from that crime.
It is a little frustrating because you're thinking,
"Well, this guy was right there and doesn't have anything to do
with this-- with this murder."
Now you're back to square one.
You've got to take a broad picture and just,
you don't want to get hooked on one thing, and this is the way
this happened, you know?
That's a good thing of a good investigation is you look
broadly and see who all could be involved in this and what
all possibly happened here.
The suspect that's still out there didn't like this guy.
I mean, who...
who killed Delvin? Still don't know.
Don't have anybody else to look at right now.
So, when you're going through these investigations,
you want to know the victim's life.
You want to build the victim...
his own profile.
The more information you gather, you're starting to build
some sort of a lead to try to help solve this case.
One thing we're gonna do is look at his background.
There's a couple different ways we can do it, Facebook
and interviewing witnesses and talking to people.
So, as we're investigating this-- this murder,
we start looking at Delvin's history--
'cause we don't have much to go off of.
He has a report taken under his name for something
criminal, which wasn't, like, something huge.
There wasn't anything of interest
that we would need or think that we would need
to-- to follow up with.
A short time later, another detective in the office
had answered a phone call, and it was a male subject,
and it was named Justin Brewer, saying he'd like to talk to
Detective Lowe.
Pretty much almost every homicide we do-- we always
kind of get some type of tip, or, "Hey, you might want to know
this information."
That's kind of typical of every case you have.
He said that Delvin was a good guy.
He's a great guy. He's known Delvin...
and Delvin's family pretty much his entire life.
And he also mentioned a subject named Sean.
And he has either a wife or a girlfriend that was
named Chasity.
And supposedly, Delvin was
messing around with this Chasity lady
and maybe we should turn our direction towards that,
maybe-- maybe Sean's...
mad at Delvin and decided that he's had enough
and he's going to take care of it.
When Mr. Brewer talked about Sean being involved,
so that's something you have to take in consideration.
Sometimes you have retaliation killings.
We were very concerned of the situation.
When the gentleman that's having an affair with
your significant other does end up murdered,
you're always suspicious when anything like that happens.
Maybe that could be one potential motive for
Mr. Mitchell's demise.
We need to interview him to help us find out where is this
gonna lead us?
2 Mr. Brewer did contact the police department
on a recorded phone call.
He brought up the information that Mr. Mitchell was having
a relationship with Chasity, and that her husband, Sean,
was not happy about that.
Sean's one that I raised, also.
Everybody thought Sean done it.
Everybody was calling me, talking about,
"Sean, we're gonna kill Sean."
Me knowing Sean, growing up with Sean, like, I knew that
he, you know, he wouldn't do nothing like that.
You know, but, you know, no putting nothing past
nobody, though. We don't know.
We just know that he's a person of interest.
Obviously, we're going to look at Sean's criminal history,
and he did have a little criminal history with
disorderly conduct and lying to law enforcement.
Sean said, "Mom, I didn't do it."
So, I believed Sean.
So, I went with Sean to the interrogation place.
I had talked to Sean about the murder,
and that he's a possible suspect that his ex-wife, Chasity,
had been seeing Delvin.
That night he got killed, I had to tell Sean that Delvin
was with Chasity. He didn't know.
So he got mad and sad all at the same time.
He said he was a little upset about that, but, you know,
it wasn't something that he would go and take
revenge out on somebody for.
Sean said he went to sleep that night that
that incident occurred.
And he didn't know anything about it until the next morning
when he woke up.
You have a past conviction of lying to the police.
You know, why are we gonna believe--
you're gonna have to show us, you know, why--
why you're not involved in this.
He said, "I have an app that tracks my sleeping pattern
"and it'll show you on my phone that at that particular time
and day that I was sleeping."
So, we looked at his phone, uh, looked at that app.
He was just being very honest and truthful,
which, in our minds, kind of eliminated him
from-- from this murder.
Investigating something like this is hard sometimes
because it's a little overwhelming,
but we keep working our case.
Delvin was my biggest fan,
my biggest supporter.
He was always pushing me to do great.
I remember, like, preparing for the funeral.
His birth mother did not want to show up.
She did not.
His sisters welcomed me in, you know, because they know
that I took care of him.
Then everybody got together and wanted a picture taken of
all the guys together.
That whole time, like, I changed to a whole
different person. Like, I don't even remember
who I was at that moment.
And we were still trying to find the killer for Dalvin.
So it's just a lot going on at this moment.
You know what I'm saying? Like, I can't grieve at all right now.
Like, right now, it's just like...
my soul's gone.
You know, I don't even want to live no more myself.
You know what I mean? So it really hurt, for real.
And I'm still suffering.
His life was taken.
He didn't deserve that.
There's a lot of people out here that deserve it,
but he didn't.
A short time later, the phone rings,
again, it's Justin Brewer, same guy from
the earlier communication.
I did find that kind of odd that another call came in,
so I answered the phone.
He tries to tell me several different stories about what
could possibly happen to Delvin,
which, in my mind, I thought was kind of far-fetched.
I said, "Did you ever meet up with Delvin?"
He said he was supposed to meet Delvin on the night
that he was murdered.
And at that particular time, I don't know that information.
He didn't want to give a whole lot of information before,
so you're kind of wondering why now.
So I asked him where they're gonna meet at.
It's a little apartment complex, a block and a half away
from where Delvin got shot and killed,
Where he could get a bag of weed for his wife.
His wife's name was Amber Brewer.
She worked for a cab company.
"Driving a cab?" And he said, "No, no,
"I met in that area, and I waited all night long.
He never showed."
There was other detectives in the room with me.
We kind of all just looked at each other in awe.
He just kind of admitted being there that night,
close to the area where Delvin was murdered.
In my opinion, you're being nosy
because you know something happened,
and you're wanting to know what we know,
and I'm not giving that to you.
After we completed our conversation, like I said,
did this guy really just call in here
and give this story
of...
his events that, in his mind, took place?
It didn't make any sense.
None-- none of his stories made any sense.
I believe then Justin called back one or two more times
just trying to kind of feel the detective out,
"Hey, what do you have on me?" And then trying to throw shade
on maybe other, to send the investigation to another
area other than himself.
He kind of admitted that he was supposed to meet Delvin
very close to where the incident occurred,
the night that he was murdered.
So we had enough probable cause to get a warrant for
his phone number to get call detail records, text messages,
and found out that on the night of the incident, Justin had
called a female.
Her name's Scarlett.
There were several phone calls and texts back and forth.
So we all were thinking, "Is she the side chick that
got involved?"
When you commit a crime such as murder,
you know, the wheels are turning.
I'm sure he's looking out the window.
"Did anybody see us?"
He called on somebody that he had faith in, and maybe that
was Scarlett.
We got to talk to that person, find out how she was involved.
2 We did some further follow-ups and found additional
cellphone data.
Cellphone data does not lie.
The phone data showed that Scarlett was in recent contact
with Justin the night of the murder.
There were several phone calls and texts back and forth.
That was suspicious.
We found out that Scarlett was living with her mother.
So we went to the mother's house to try to interview her there,
but she wasn't home, so we interviewed the mother
at her house.
She was a very nice lady, and I believe she had some
concerns about her daughter's safety
since she was involved with Justin Brewer.
She said Justin ended up getting dropped off at
Scarlett's mother's house the night of the murder.
And Justin had come in, kind of in a frantic-type mood,
very wired, very amped up.
Mm-hmm.
According to Scarlett's mother,
he said something bad had happened that night.
We were starting to get more and more information.
She did admit that Justin was at the house,
that she's a potential not eyewitness to the murder,
but maybe a circumstantial witness to a murder.
Do you ever get 100% of the information?
The only person that really knows that is the person
you're interviewing.
No.
I mean, you could tell she was scared of him.
She would sit there and talk to us and smoke, which I'm not
a smoking fan, but it was worth it.
Afterwards, we did some interviews with Scarlett.
She was not willing to give up any information.
We tried to speak with Justin, but he refused to talk
to law enforcement when confronted.
Justin didn't want to speak with us.
So we put our attention more towards Amber, Justin's wife.
In the interview phone calls before with Justin Brewer,
he did inform detectives that he had been picked up that
night in Amber's cab to meet Mr. Mitchell.
And Mr. Mitchell had never shown up.
We then go to uCabbi.
They did confirm that, yes, Amber was working that night.
And her cab, that had GPS tracker in it,
which is always good for us.
And it shows exactly where the cab was going.
It could be that break moment, where like, oh, this is it.
There is almost always information on those devices
that will help us along in our case.
So you're hoping that happens.
I went into the office and they had come back from
the taxi cab place with the GPS information
that showed Amber's cab going down to the southeast side
and stopping a block or so from the murder.
So it was kind of nice to look at the data and go,
"OK, so it puts them at the scene of the crime at the time
of the murder."
And then, immediately after, it shows her stopping on top of
Diamond Avenue over Pigeon Creek.
That was the first thing we all thought, "Holy [bleep],
she just threw that gun out in the creek."
The dive team showed up at the bridge,
and they did their process as far as searching for the gun.
Are we gonna find something there?
My thoughts are, there's no way.
There's a young man from the local news,
and my first question to that reporter is,
"Hey, when is this gonna be on TV?"
And he said it would be on 11 o'clock news.
Evansville is not a huge community.
But you look up and there's
news media trucks lined across this bridge.
They were all over the story.
We then got the thumbs-up that there was a discovery,
and the diver did a great job.
He found it in pitch dark water and he pulled that thing up
and I'll never forget it.
And the next thing you know, you're looking at a slide from
a Smith & Wesson.
So this is more icing on the cake.
We had enough probable cause to get arrest warrants
for Justin and Amber.
But we could not locate them here in the city of Evansville.
It might have taken us a week or two, but, then we got, um--
I was on a date night with my wife and got a confirmation
from the FBI that Amber and Justin were in custody,
in Chamblee, Georgia, just outside Atlanta.
She was stopped while texting and driving.
So at that point, things were going good.
With them in custody,
you'd love to sit down face-to-face with them,
look them eye-to-eye, and get a full confession.
Justin Brewer refused to speak to investigators,
but Amber decided to speak with law enforcement.
Yeah.
Myself and Detective Lowe walked in there thinking,
"OK, what are we gonna hear?"
Are we going to hear some story that does not jive with any of
the evidence we have?
Or is she gonna tell us the truth?
2 Amber Brewer did decide to speak with law enforcement.
Amber basically told us that the night of the murder,
Justin was wanting to get a little bag of weed.
She said she picked Justin up.
They drove to the southeast side of Evansville
to meet Delvin that night.
She gets in the back passenger seat of Delvin's car,
and Justin gets in the front seat.
They drive around a little while.
Justin's got a gun pointing at Delvin.
And she says she jumps out of the car and takes off running.
And she gets a short distance and hears some gunshots.
People give false confessions.
We did not find anything deceitful in her interview with us.
Everything was consistent with our investigation.
So after she tells us this story, you're pretty confident
you've had the right guy.
You've been hearing his name. He's made calls to you.
It all matches up.
Mr. Mitchell was a very young man, and to be killed over
a bag of marijuana.
It is tragic.
He's not gonna get his life back, and the family doesn't
have him back.
I don't know if it's a lack of respect for a human person
or it's just the disdain for not getting something
you think you deserve. I don't know what causes this.
Amber testifies against her husband.
She was charged with obstruction.
She was released on time served.
Justin was ultimately charged with murder.
They found him guilty. He was sentenced.
And the judge recommended 85 years in prison.
Scarlett was ultimately convicted of
obstruction of justice for lying to law enforcement.
And she was sentenced to two years and 182 days.
We've done phone calls before where people have actually
called in and talked to law enforcement,
knowing they're the suspect.
They want to know what the word on the street is,
but curiosity kills the cat sometimes, and that's what
happened in this case.
In my mind, in my heart, I hope the family knows that
we did everything we could and that we did get justice
for Delvin.
Delvin, he was a star.
I mean, he was just...
great!
He didn't really get a chance to even...
live life.
I'm still having trouble with it.
I sit at home all the time.
I really don't deal with anybody.
I don't deal with anybody.
I hope Justin...
really thinks about what he done and how bad he impacted
a lot of people.
Dalvin was the joy of a lot of our lives.
And now we don't have that joy no more.
You stole that joy from us.
He took my bestest friend.
So I'm hurt, still to this day.
He was the life of the party.
There ain't no more parties no more.