ROCKY RIVER, Ohio – One day after Metroparks police asked for the public’s help to solve a shooting that left two people dead, family members of one of the victims continue to seek justice.
Katherine Brown, 33, and Carnell Sledge, 40, were found shot and killed on June 4 just after 5 p.m. The shooting happened inside the Cleveland Metroparks Rocky River Reservation. The victims were found by kayakers north of the Lorain Road bridge near Valley Parkway.
Three weeks after their deaths, extended family members of Sledge say they want his killer behind bars.
“Out in a park on an open space on a beautiful day, early afternoon and you’re going to tell me no one saw anything? We have no idea what’s going on,” said Beverly Perry, a cousin of Sledge.
The death of Sledge is the second tragedy to strike his extended family within months.
“DeVaughn was one of three people who was murdered that night he was just attending a party and someone shot it up,” his mother Cheria Hall-Hobbs said.
Hall-Hobbs says her son DeVaughn Gibson was 23 when he was killed during a New Year’s Eve Party. His death remains unsolved. She said he attended Tri-C, had a 4.0 GPA, was a licensed barber and enrolled in truck driving school.
She founded the Barber Gibbs Dream Memorial Scholarship Fund in honor of her son. The scholarship will award $1,000 for a student between the ages of 18 to 26 years old in need of assistance to pursue their academic goals.
“Even after death, he is still continuing to help others because that’s what he would do if he was here,” said Hall-Hobbs.
Both families said the days since the deaths of Gibson and Sledge have been painful. They hope to find justice in the deaths of both men.
“When DeVaughn was killed that was one horrible horrible thing,” said Perry. “We was just about, I, you know, a little bit better and then Carnell got killed and nothing has been done about either one of these young men.”
Click here for more on the Barber Gibbs Dream Memorial Scholarship Fund.
