On the night of September 10, 2021, 25-year-old Arick Jordan Jackson of Washington, D.C., was found fatally shot in the breezeway of an apartment complex on the 12100 block of Ell Lane in Waldorf, Maryland. Charles County deputies pronounced him dead at the scene after responding to reports of a single gunshot.

Surveillance video showed Jackson arriving and speaking with several people, including a man later identified as Jermaine Christopher Stringer. The footage captures Jackson walking toward the breezeway, the sound of a gun being racked, and Stringer pursuing Jackson before firing a single shot that struck him in the upper back. Investigators identified two suspects; Darius Delonte Newman was arrested on September 21, 2021, as an accessory after the fact, and Jermaine Christopher Stringer was later taken into custody.

A red plastic cup found at the scene reportedly carried Stringer’s fingerprints and DNA. What other details about Jackson’s final hours or the people he was with that night might help explain why he was there?