On the morning of March 15, 2020, a party at a home on West Linn Street in Marshalltown, Iowa, ended when 27-year-old Blake Thomas, a Black / African American man, was shot during an argument. The dispute began inside and moved outside around 3:30 a.m., when another man, Mustafa Muhammad, drew a handgun and fired multiple times. Thomas was struck by six gunshot wounds and died at UnityPoint Health-Marshalltown.

Investigators linked the shooting to Muhammad after finding the murder weapon in a neighbor’s grill with Muhammad’s palm print on it. Muhammad initially gave a different account to detectives before admitting he had shot Thomas multiple times. At trial, the defense said Muhammad acted in self-defense and claimed Thomas and his brother Robert were armed and threatening; the prosecution maintained Thomas was unarmed and only trash talking, and toxicology reported only alcohol in Thomas’s system. A jury later convicted Muhammad of first-degree murder and reckless use of a firearm.

The fatal shooting also preceded a separate killing by Blake Thomas’s brother, Robert J. Thomas, 10 days later; that act led to a separate conviction and sentence.