A newly disclosed search warrant says Durham police linked at least five shootings to retaliation following a February killing at a Durham Housing Authority property. The shootings unfolded across roughly seven months and killed two adults while injuring three children or teenagers, according to the investigative record reviewed by WRAL.
Officers executed the warrant Sept. 2 at an apartment in the Cornwallis Road housing complex as they gathered evidence in the connected cases. The chain described by investigators includes the February homicide and later shootings that police believe involved people responding to earlier violence.
The warrant is an investigative filing that states police grounds for a search; it is not a conviction and does not establish every allegation as a proven fact. Durham leaders are preparing additional violence-reduction strategies while detectives continue work on the homicides and shootings named in the filing.
Retaliatory cases can span multiple victims, witnesses and locations, making timelines and communications evidence important to testing police theories. Public-housing residents are affected by both the violence and enforcement activity, while the housing authority and city have separate operational responsibilities. Court records can reveal the basis for searches before prosecutors decide whether evidence supports charges against particular people.
The record also described a June 11 murder charge connected to a killing at a nearby gas station, one element in the longer chronology investigators are using to assess motive and retaliation.
At the edition deadline, the complete warrant evidence, identities of all suspected participants and status of every charging decision were not public in the report. The next documented developments will be new arrests, indictments or court filings tied to the five shootings and the specific violence-reduction measures adopted by Durham officials.