Seventeen-year-old Shinobi Pitts was shot and killed on Thursday, August 21, 2025, near a gazebo just steps from his family’s apartment on Pennsylvania Avenue in Savannah, Georgia. Witnesses say Pitts was waiting by the gazebo for what he believed would be a fistfight when a car pulled up; without words being exchanged, shots were fired from the vehicle, striking and killing him.

The shooting followed an unsanctioned boxing event five days earlier promoted as Guns Down, Gloves Up, which Pitts’s family believes contributed to the escalation. Pitts reportedly had a longstanding conflict with the person later accused in the case, tracing back to an eighth-grade fight; that person was said to have been at the boxing event and subsequently sought another confrontation.

The Savannah Police Department opened a homicide investigation and arrested an individual in connection with the shooting. The community held vigils and called for action after Pitts’s death and the killing of another teenager the following day.

If anyone knew Shinobi, witnessed the shooting, or has information about the events leading up to August 21, please come forward.