http://blogs.denverpost.com/coldcases/2008/09/14/caller-claims-knowledge-of-drive-by-killers/
Caller claims knowledge of drive-by killers
By
Kirk Mitchell
Comments (2)
Print
E-mail
Share
Share
Name: Bruce Harrell, 21
Location: At traffic light at 30th and Welton streets
Agency: Denver Police Department
Date killed: Jan. 11, 2006
Cause of death: Multiple gunshots
Suspect: None identified
An anonymous call brought a homicide detective tantalizingly close to the killers of a promising young college student in a drive-by shooting.
Bruce Harrell with his mother, Diane, in 2004 at the Jack and Jill Ball
One more such call could be all that is needed to make arrests, Denver Detective Jaime Castro said.
The caller left an anonymous message with Crime Stoppers in February 2006, the month after Bruce Harrell was murdered.
“I’d like to sit down and talk with this person,” Castro said. “We need to verify the information that person gave.”
The witness gave the names of multiple suspects who fired bullets from handguns that killed Harrell and wounded Marquette Johnson, he said. The witness also knew why the murder happened.
“I believe they were targeted,” Castro said.
On Jan. 11, 2006, Bruce Harrell sent a text message to his brother, Anthony Farmer, who was in his third year at Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law in Houston.
It was his mother’s 47th birthday, and Bruce Harrell told his brother that he was going to send flowers to his mother and take her to dinner that night. Diane Harrell was in nursing school at the time.
The short communication was the last Farmer would ever hear from his brother, who was a first-year criminal-justice student at Johnson & Wales University in Denver and planned to work with him as a legal clerk when the two graduated.
That afternoon, Bruce Harrell’s aunt, Denise Watts, gave him two prized tickets to a Denver Nuggets game. As was his custom, he kissed her on the forehead in appreciation.
Bruce Harrell, who liked to play basketball during his free time, was an ardent Nuggets fan who idolized Nuggets star Carmelo Anthony and former team center Marcus Camby.
Bruce Harrell picked up his friend, Marquette Johnson, and drove to the Pepsi Center for the basketball game. Afterward, he called his mother and said he was on his way home to take her to Red Lobster.
He had always been thoughtful like that, she said. He regularly mowed the lawn and cleaned house at his grandparents home. Bruce played drums at Jordan Chapel, 2900 Milwaukee St. He loved to dance.
Minutes after the call, he stopped at a red light at 30th and Welton streets. Another car pulled up, and at least two men holding handguns opened fire. Both Harrell and Johnson were hit by multiple bullets.
“They couldn’t communicate like a man,” Diane Harrell said. “They had to sneak up on him like a snake in the dark.”
Bruce Harrell in the 10th grade
In the days after the shooting, Johnson’s mother came to visit Diane Harrell’s home and told her and Farmer that she had advised her son in the hospital not to “go too deep” when talking about the shooting to police, Farmer said.
“She told that to our face,” he said. “My mother said, ‘I can’t believe it.’ ”
Johnson’s mother said she was afraid that if her son said too much, he would be hurt or might be implicated in other crimes.
“She was looking after his best interests,” Farmer said. “I think he knows exactly who it was (who shot them). You would think if your best friend was killed, you would come forward and share everything you know.”
After the shootings, Farmer did his own questioning of people with ties to gangs in Denver.
Farmer said his brother was never a gang member himself but had friends with ties to gangs and that he was sometimes drawn into their feuds.
“A couple of his buddies weren’t the best of characters,” he said.
Some people speculate that earlier that night, there was a fight and that the shooting was in retaliation, Farmer said. Others suggest he was targeted because of his friendships with the wrong people, he said.
Diane Harrell said she believes it’s only a matter of time before the right person steps forward to help. Her family is offering $10,000 to whoever provides information needed to solve the case.
“They don’t deserve life,” she said of her son’s killers. “They don’t deserve life. They deserve to be put away and maybe put to death.”
She said she hopes that whoever killed her son will some day feel the same misery she has experienced. She said she cries constantly, can’t eat and can’t sleep.
“They need to experience difficulty, pain and loss,” Diane Harrell said. “I pray this gets solved.”
Contact information: Anyone with information about this case is asked to contact Detective Jaime Castro of the Denver Police Department at 720-913-6243. Denver Post reporter Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-954-1206 or
kmitchell@denverpost.com./
Picture in link
