On March 1st at about 5:25 PM.
we received multiple 911 calls from the Mill Pond Park area.
Reports were saying that people were fleeing from the vehicle,
possibly a shooting.
We had no idea the number of victims
that might have been at the scene.
We also had no idea where the shooter was at that time.
When I arrived on scene, I activated my body camera.
My initial thoughts were that to find the car to start with,
and then work our way to people from there.
First thing I saw was a white sedan
that was crashed in the front of the residence.
And within that vehicle, I witnessed a subject that was
slumped over and possibly shot in the head.
He was breathing, but it wasn't direct breathing,
so the breath wasn't great.
We try to ask people "Who shot you? Who hurt you?"
'Cause initially, if they are going to pass away,
they give us what's called a dying declaration.
That would be the only chance they had
to tell us what happened.
At that point in time, we couldn't get
any information from the victim.
He couldn't tell us what happened,
who had done it to him.
We had no idea what happened at that point in time
to help us solve the mystery of what occurred
before we arrived.
They got the victim into the hospital
in critical condition with gunshot wounds to the head.
We put tape around the area and we secured everything
for all the evidence.
I've been a police officer for almost 17 years.
My job is not to get emotional about what I see in front of me
at that point in time. That's for later.
our job is to be there now, calm, cool, and collected,
save as many people as we can, and figure out what happened.
Once we have the crime scene completely secured,
we return our attention back to the white sedan.
Collected evidence from the inside of the vehicle,
including shell casings, as well as DNA evidence.
Looks like a 380.
I got one unspent and one spent.
There were spent rounds
found inside the vehicle.
so there was a possibility that the shooting
actually occurred inside the vehicle.
But no weapon was recovered at that time.
It did seem that the people within the car
were specifically targeted.
But why were they targeted?
What is the motivating factor in this?
What was the gain?
Next, we turn our attention to one of the 911 callers,
the homeowner of the residence where the vehicle had wrecked.
Based on that one call, we knew that we had
another victim or possibly an accused
somewhere in the trailer park.
That 911 caller tried to provide the best description
she could at that time.
The witness said that she did observe that subject running
from the vehicle in a brown jacket.
That 911 caller wasn't able to determine whether or not
that person was the victim or the shooter.
We needed to locate him as soon as possible.
Here everything.
She got in the car and she took off that turn.
After we speak to the 911 callers, we do begin
to canvass the area where an incident occurred.
And that's when a witness had stepped forward and told us
that a gentleman had ran towards a mobile home,
possibly covered in blood.
One-nine, just get down here, please.
Ten-four.
We responded to that mobile home,
tried to find either more victims or the possible shooter.
we have to always approach any situation with safety,
because at that time, we're not gonna know
if that's a bad guy or a good guy.
We got into the mobile home,
and there was an unknown male on the floor holding a towel
to the back of his head.
He was not armed.
So I began holding pressure to his head.
The subject was able to tell me his name, Davon Hudson.
Davon had told us that he was driving the vehicle.
He gave us the name of the victim
they took to the hospital,
Delayno Hudson, Jr.
He was a beautiful soul.
Growing up, he was
so happy, full of joy, full of energy.
Always wanting to move and go somewhere,
wanted to go see somebody or some family.
My uncle and my aunt made sure they did everything they could
to give him the best childhood.
I got word that he was shot in the head.
I received a phone call from my sister.
She's just yelling and screaming, and I can't
really understand what she's saying.
And she's like,
they shot him.
Delayno, they shot him.
I said, "Well, can-- is he OK? Is he gonna live?"
And she's like, "I don't know." And she's just
bawling and crying.
So...
I-- I prayed.
And I prayed, and I prayed, and I prayed.
And I asked God just to
please spare his life.
When Davon had told me that there were four people
inside the vehicle,
at that point in time, I realized this wasn't
just a random shooting.
This was a targeted situation.
When I put Davon into the ambulance,
my first question that ran through my mind
when I thought everything was close range and was personal
was who was inside the vehicle with them?
and who did they either make angry or have with them
in the vehicle by the time this incident occurred.
We had to move fast if we're gonna get ahead of it.
We began to spread out and fan out throughout the area.
We were attempting to find more evidence,
or possibly more victims,
and we still had no idea who the shooter was
or where he could possibly be at.
A few blocks away from the mobile home park,
we located a gentleman that was wearing a brown Carhartt jacket
that was slumped over, appeared to be staggering
while he was walking.
So we had to think about if this guy was the person
that pulled the trigger or was he also
running away for his life?
It's always a mystery to figure out what the motive
of a crime is.
So not having any idea what could have transpired
between these people...
This was a challenge we needed to accomplish.
2
At this point, we had two victims at the hospital,
Davon and Delayno Hudson, Jr.,
both in critical condition with gunshot wounds to the head.
Then we had a third man,
somebody on the road.
Possible victim or possible suspect, we weren't sure yet.
The gentleman identified himself as Jim.
He was very bloody,
but at this point in time, we were on high alert
'cause there's a potential of an active shooter
around the surrounding areas.
In moments like this, we have three different people
in three different places that all need police.
Our training is to never make the scene too small
to see the bigger picture.
Jim was not armed.
Jim had told us that to him, everything was a blur.
He had no idea what had happened.
Situations like this makes it very difficult for detectives
to figure out what took place when they're working
with only a fraction of the information
of what had taken place, and why are four people's lives
forever changed?
What was big enough to make this happen?
And still no answer to that question.
And after transporting Jim to the hospital,
we called in the K-9 unit.
We were still looking for the fourth person
and possibly the shooter from the car at this time.
A canine's nose is much different than a human's nose
and much more sensitive.
They are able to smell things and alert their handlers
of what particular trail they're taking
based on how they've been trained.
The K-9 team was able to find a location starting point
and track from that starting point to see if they could
pick up a trail.
He came down the road.
At one point, they track to a trailer that was
either occupied or unoccupied.
When they did that, I was stuck on a perimeter point
around the trailer
to make sure that no one fled from that trailer
while officers went in to search it.
During those situations, we have to be very vigilant
and aware of our surroundings.
The K-9 team tracked to this location and trailer,
but that accused could be anywhere
in the surrounding areas.
We always had to keep our head on a swivel
and just stay very focused.
That just added to the mystery.
We take every step to preserve the life of our officers,
and those dogs are trained to go into situations
in order to grab onto that particular suspect or victims
and give the officers an opportunity to go in there
after the dog has engaged with that person.
It was empty
and it became extremely frustrating for us
to deal with, 'cause now we're starting to lose the daylight,
which makes everything much more difficult.
While we were searching, someone came forward
and said that the shooter possibly ran down the street.
We had the K-9 unit circle back
to start up on a second track in a different direction.
At some point, the K-9 locked into a scent
that led us straight to a man walking down the street.
It was hard to decide if this person wasn't the shooter
or if they were a victim.
We had to make a decision if this was the fourth person,
the person we were looking for.
Was it a victim? Was it a shooter?
We had to deal with all that information at once.
It's in situations like this where you have multiple victims
and a possible shooter we're still trying to locate,
it puts immense pressure on the police department
to take that person into custody.
The man was not upset. He was not irate.
He had no blood on him at all.
Once we started to talk to the subject,
he did tell us he was out for a walk,
just came from his mother's house.
He was just a likable guy who was really a victim
of circumstance.
When we release someone from custody that we think
may be an accused, we rule them out as a suspect.
We do apologize, and we also give them a business card
with our information on it,
as well as our supervisor's information.
But we couldn't slow down at all.
We had to move forward with the investigation
and try to locate the suspect and the victim.
As it became darker outside, it became more difficult for us
to locate anything.
We searched almost the entire mobile home park,
as well as every outbuilding that we could find,
just to clear the scene.
The amount of frustration we're feeling at that time,
now that we kept getting different leads,
and it kept ending up being not what we were looking for.
Then we received a call that changed everything.
The doctors advised us that one of our victims was
on life support and was not gonna make it.
Now, this became a homicide investigation.
And this mystery had taken a much darker turn.
2
By now, we had a few pieces of the puzzle
getting put together.
We knew that we had three people in the hospital,
two in critical condition.
So our ultimate goal now is to find that fourth person
and to capture the shooter.
Then came the name of the victim
who did not survive,
Delayno Hudson, Jr.
I learned that Delayno passed
through a phone call.
My mom reached out and let me know
that he didn't make it.
I know at the end of the day, God gives and He takes,
and it's just like,
why take that one?
Delayno was a brother to me.
I grew up with him just like I did my sisters.
We were in the same household nine times out of ten.
He always liked to laugh, and joke and play.
Losing him to this day
still rocks me to the core.
A little while later, we learned from the hospital
that Jim was going to survive
and that Davon, who was the driver
and had been shot in the head, was now awake
and was going to survive
and he was able to talk to us.
We immediately spoke with Davon
about who else he was with that day.
When I started talking to Davon, it became clear
that he was hesitant to provide information that had occurred.
Whether through fear or through personal knowledge
of the fourth victim or the shooter, I wasn't sure.
But at this point in time, he wasn't being forthcoming
with information as I had hoped.
I think that the trauma of being shot,
but also shot in the head,
and then watching a person that you call your brother
be shot next to you,
knowing that that person is dead,
That bears a lot on a person
in order to sort out what to say next.
So, after some initial hesitation,
Davon did provide us with the name
of the fourth person in the vehicle,
and that was Kyvon Wells.
Davon had told me that early that day,
they were going to the Lansing Mall,
where they were gonna sell some cell phones.
The idea was once those cell phones were sold,
they were going to split the cash.
So after the group sold the cell phones
and left the mall, they went toward Mill Pond Village
to drop Kyvon back off
at where he had been staying.
According to Davon, as he was driving,
Kyvon said he would just get out.
That's when Davon heard the gunshot
and knew that he had been shot in the head.
He hit the gas,
which is when he did strike the parked car,
which pushed the car into the adjacent trailer home.
He jumped out of the car immediately after hearing
the first gunshot, and then he heard
multiple more gunshots as he was running away.
It looked like a robbery related crime gone wrong.
At that time, Davon had no idea where Kyvon was at.
After speaking to Davon, we turned our attention
to the other surviving victim, Jim.
We wanted to see if his version of events would line up
to Davon's to make sure their statements were cohesive.
When we spoke to Jim, he essentially was able
to corroborate Davon's statement about what had occurred.
We didn't have a clear motive about what had taken place,
so figuring out what happened and why was very difficult.
There was still an unknown accused in the situation.
Family and friends had spread word that Delayno,
had passed away...
and that Davon and Jim are both going to survive.
We had several family members that went up to the hospital,
and emotions were running very high.
It was an active investigation, which understandably
became frustrating for some of the family members.
There's no right way to handle the stress of that moment,
and, of course, people are emotional, people who are
very angry, and very upset, and very hurt
and grief stricken.
You gotta remember that
everybody is going through something.
We're all grieving in some way.
Delayno was a huge loss to everyone.
So it's not just you.
Don't think you have to go and hide in a corner
and say, "I have to do this by myself."
We're here. We love all of our family.
Unfortunately, this is a pretty common occurrence
when family members do show up to the hospital.
They can become very emotional.
We still have a job to do,
and when someone does pass away as a homicide victim,
we become their advocates for them.
It is certainly a possibility any time a homicide takes place
that perhaps the accused person in the event is not finished.
We put precautions in place for that.
When Kyvon Wells was identified as the other person
that was in the car,
we were concerned.
He was injured pretty severely.
So we started to gather information about who he was,
who his family was, where they lived,
who are his associates, where may he be.
That was a high priority for us.
We knew that the group in the car were
in the process of selling phones.
We believe that the sale of those cell phones
may have been a result of this particular
robbery and shooting.
That was a big lead for us,
and that's what we focused on.
Next, I made contact with the mall security,
'cause they had a pretty decent security surveillance system.
And I was able to obtain video footage,
but we could not imagine what we saw
when we looked at the footage.
2 We knew that there were two cell phones involved
in the transaction, so that was our main focus,
is try to find out who actually provided those cell phones.
Typically, we run the surveillance footage
back out into the parking lot to determine
what kind of vehicle that subject came from
and when they actually walked into the main area,
and then when they walk back out.
Looking at video footage from the mall,
it was nearly impossible to see the person they met
to actually purchase the cell phones
from beyond clothing descriptions.
You could tell one person was a darker complexioned person
and one person appeared to be white.
You could tell the color of their clothing.
You could not make a face out enough
to know if it was your mom, even.
It was very difficult to see who that person was.
There's a possibility that they could have been hiding
from the cameras.
We were not able to track who actually bought
those cell phones.
So we shifted focus to the one person that would
still have the answers to our investigation.
And that's Kyvon Wells.
Most people nowadays are on social media.
So we start there.
In looking at social media accounts and cell phone records
after the fact,
we learned that Kyvon had a previous girlfriend
who was carrying a baby with him,
and we spoke with her.
She was cooperative, but in the sense that she felt
she needed to be cooperative, but didn't necessarily
want to be cooperative.
She was very surprised that the police had
associated her with Kyvon so quickly.
There were definitely questions as far as,
did she have the motivation, did she have the means
to help him get out of this area?
Because if most of the resources of Lansing Police Department
are looking for you, and you're still in the area,
we have a really good idea of where you are.
And she did allow us to search her apartment
at that particular time.
We did not find any signs of him.
He was definitely on the run after this incident occurred,
and our main objective was to secure and provide
protection for him.
It was frustrating because, as soon as we were
able to find a lead of where now to look,
it disappeared.
We unfortunately run into this situation where
there's not a lot of movement in the case,
and sometimes it can stall, but we're pretty vigilant.
In nearly a month after Delayno Hudson, Jr.'s murder,
we had a break in the case.
A man came into the Lansing Police Department.
He was definitely apprehensive to talk with us,
and he had information for us.
We learned that he saw Delayno the same day as the homicide.
Once we started to talk to the subject,
there was a bombshell that was dropped.
The particulars of the cell phones
that they sold at the mall came to light.
He had paid for the cell phones,
and he paid Kyvon at the mall.
I believed much of what he was saying to be true
because, at that point, he had mentioned
other people by name who I knew were close
to Davon and Delayno, and I didn't think
that he would lie based on knowing and being close
with some of the same people.
He did tell me at the time of our interview
that he believed Kyvon fired into the car,
and it didn't shock him, because Kyvon wanted the money.
At first, I felt like he wasn't providing
all of the details he may have known at the time.
And then, before we were finished talking,
I feel like he absolutely gave us
all of the information that he knew.
At this point, Kyvon Wells went from victim to suspect,
and there was an all out race to locate him.
Given his clear disregard for others,
he was willing to kill a human over a cell phone
and injure people that were close to him.
We entered the suspect's information
into the national database, and in return it was broadcasted
throughout our city.
Then we made an alert, put out to the media
that Kyvon was considered armed and dangerous.
Police tell me the fourth person in the car
is still missing.
They're calling him a person of interest.
Take a good look at this man.
Lansing police are trying to track him down.
20 year old Kyvon Wells is wanted
for the death of Delayno Hudson.
Two other people were hurt by the gunfire.
The public helps us quite a bit.
Most folks here wanna help us.
Most folks here are great people,
and we wanna get these people off the street
as soon as possible.
So, a lot of times that could aid our investigation.
So every lead was followed up on,
but one lead changed everything.
We had received an anonymous call
that Mr. Wells could have been in Gulfport, Mississippi.
And once it was determined that he had likely
fled the state of Michigan to Gulfport,
the shift kind of went from the state police
fugitive team looking for him.
That's gonna be where you're gonna have
the U.S. Marshals service involved because they're used
to doing that throughout the country.
It's kind of when the investigation
into locating Kyvon actually took off.
It certainly was unfathomable to even speculate
what happens next.
2
Once the fugitive team recognized that Kyvon
had left the state of Michigan, they reached out
to the U.S. Marshals.
And then very soon after they found him
in Gulfport, Mississippi.
Kyvon was arrested without incident.
After several weeks on the run, Kyvon Wells was
in police custody.
And all of the information was released to the media.
A man has been arrested for the murder
at Mill Pond Mobile Home Park in South Lansing.
Kyvon Wells was taken into custody in Gulfport, Mississippi
by U.S. Marshals and local police.
He's wanted in connection with the shooting death
of 24 year old Delayno Hudson on March 1st.
I don't like to say it was like a pat on the back
because that feels callous, but it was definitely
like I had done my job and got to the point
that the person who perpetrated this crime
was at least in custody.
Not that that's the end of the road, but it's certainly
the beginning of a family getting a little bit of justice
for their family members.
Once Kyvon Wells was back in the Lansing area,
he was interviewed.
When you have suspects that have been on the run
for a long time, and they're a little cocky and brash,
you have to approach them in a way that's firm,
but yet you need to solicit information.
And then we're gonna go easy into whatever we're doing.
We want to put them in the place
that the crime occurred, and then go from there.
Once we began a conversation, it was obvious that Kyvon
didn't want to talk to me.
He was abrasive in every answer.
He was short in the very limited information
he did share.
He challenged everything that was said to him
in that interview.
Things as simple as, "Where do you live?
What is your birth date?"
were met with nothing but--
attitude?
When you have combative suspects,
you just have to go hard, and then you just have to hope
that you can break through.
That's a big win.
Kyvon never changed his facial expressions.
He never showed any emotion outside of anger.
He never appeared to be remorseful in anything
that's taken place.
Throughout my time as a detective,
specifically being a homicide detective,
I often question humanity.
And in moments like this, there's no good reason.
There's no why.
There's nothing that makes sense as to why
this incident took place.
It just doesn't make sense.
It's just disgusting.
I believe Kyvon Wells shot all three of these people
over greed and a few hundred dollars' worth of cell phones.
We were able to obtain his DNA pursuant to the search warrant,
and it was confirmed that Kyvon Wells' DNA was
within the car.
But no gun was ever located.
I imagine that the gun quickly disappeared
shortly after the homicide took place.
On November 21st of 2021, Kyvon Wells pled guilty
to second degree murder,
the killing of Delayno Hudson, Jr.
Kyvon Wells was sentenced to 28 and a half years in prison
as a minimum and 64 years as the maximum sentence
for this crime.
For me, this case was a challenge
because Delayno Hudson looks so similar
to one of my family members,
a person I love.
It was a challenge for me to separate that at times.
I easily could see my own family in those situations,
just based on the emotional trauma they were dealing with.
What do I miss most about Delayno?
Everything.
I miss his smile. I miss his laughter.
I miss how he looks like my grandmother.
Like, if you seen them two together, you would think
they were literally twins.
The-- same eyes, same nose, everything.
Like-- he-- I miss everything about him.
He was an amazing person, and being able to know him
and being able to see him grow from birth
was...
nothing short than special.
Delayno Hudson, Jr., you are missed,
you are loved,
and I wish you could be here with us today.