Murder caught on camera, DPD needs help ID'ing suspects

DETROIT (WJBK) - A murder caught on camera and now police are hoping someone will recognize the shooter and three other persons of interest.

The incident was recorded on surveillance video at a Detroit shopping center on Gratiot and Townsend. Kuron Brandon was shot four times, twice in the head there on Tuesday.

Willie Downer is unable to rest until the killer of his 27-year-old grandson is caught.

"I had a sleepless night last night and I don't know what tonight is going to be like," said he said.

"I'm really fed up with the violence in the city of Detroit especially among our young men. Now it's someone in my family and I'm hurt."

Police say Downer, the Detroit father of two, stopped by to grab food in this parking lot along Gratiot Tuesday night with a friend.

His friend went inside a store, then a witness tells police a man thought to be the shooter approached Brandon who was standing outside the car. They began talking. Then that man, simply, walked away.

"It appeared to be a conversation, it was not heated, it didn't seem to be overboard," Sgt. Michael Woody, Detroit police said. "But there was some conflict there."

FOX 2: "And this person decided to go overboard?"

"Absolutely," Woody said.

Sources say after that conversation the shooter returned to the store firing five shots toward Brandon. Two of those bullets hit him in the head and two more hitting him in the stomach.

"He was a good kid," Downer said. "He wasn't a troublemaker."

Kuron Brandon's family says he recently earned his associates degree and had been working two jobs to take care of his two young children.

"He was actually getting ready to be promoted," Downer said.  "He just got his own apartment, moving out from his mom and prepared to go out on his own."

Looking at surveillance video, police describe the shooter as a black man about 25 years old, 5 feet 6 inches tall and 150 pounds with short hair. He was last seen leaving the store wearing a black shirt and black shorts.

"He is actually cocking a gun and putting it in his pocket," Woody said of the security video of the suspect.

Police are trying to track down that shooter and the two young men he was seen with. Brandon's family, now says if you know who those men are or where they are, you know what to do.

"If our community is going to get better it's not going to be the police that do it, it is going to be us," Downer said. "We have to speak up. We have to speak up."

Anyone with information should call Detroit police at (313) 596-5200 or Crime Stoppers which allows tipsters to remain anonymous.