Akron police have charged a second suspect, 28-year-old Ashanti Jarvis, with aggravated murder in connection with the May shooting death of 29-year-old Dylante Richardson, accusing her of driving the alleged gunman to and from the scene. Both Jarvis and the man she allegedly drove, 24-year-old Carlos Shropshire Jr., were already sitting in jail on unrelated charges when detectives tied them to the killing.
Richardson was found on the sidewalk in the 800 block of Kenmore Boulevard with multiple gunshot wounds at about 10 a.m. on May 27, 2026, and was pronounced dead at the scene, according to cleveland.com. As reported by Cleveland 19 News, officers responded to the block after reports of multiple gunshots and arrived to find Richardson with no suspects and no eyewitnesses immediately identified, police said.
Detectives believe Shropshire exited the vehicle, shot Richardson and returned to the vehicle driven by Jarvis, according to the Akron Beacon Journal. Jarvis was identified as the individual who drove Shropshire to the scene of the shooting, per the same report. Both suspects were already in custody at Summit County Jail on unrelated aggravated robbery charges when the murder charges were filed.
How Flock Cameras Pointed Detectives to a Vehicle
Akron police said detectives used Flock Safety cameras to identify the vehicle believed to be involved in the shooting, according to Fox 8. Cleveland 19 News reports that Akron Police Major Crimes Unit detectives identified Jarvis as a second suspect in Richardson's murder months after the shooting, with the camera network playing a key role in narrowing down a vehicle of interest that investigators initially lacked enough information to connect to a suspect.
Akron police maintain a number of Flock Safety cameras throughout the city and say the technology is regularly used to assist investigations, per Cleveland 19 News. Investigators credited the cameras with helping pinpoint the vehicle's location during and after the shooting, aiding a case that otherwise began with no suspects and no witnesses.
Shropshire is due back in court on Oct. 22, cleveland.com reports.
A Camera Network Under Growing Scrutiny
Nearly 150 Flock Safety cameras are mounted throughout Akron, capturing license plates, vehicle color, make and model and feeding that data into a searchable record, according to Signal Akron. That local network is part of a much larger system — more than 6,000 law-enforcement agencies nationwide operate roughly 120,000 Flock cameras, and Akron's captures are searchable for 30 days by agencies anywhere in the country, the outlet reports.
The scale of that access has drawn scrutiny. Signal Akron found that Akron Police records from a five-month period in 2025 logged more than 37,000 Flock searches by officers that listed no discernible reason, despite department policy requiring one. Since October 2025, in response to a complaint, the department has required more thorough recordkeeping for those searches, per the same report.
Flock Safety itself has announced coming changes, telling Government Technology that it plans to require searches be tied to a case number and to shorten its standard data storage window from 30 days to seven. Ohio lawmakers have introduced four competing proposals to rein in the technology, the outlet notes. House Bill 1009 would make it a fifth-degree felony for officers to access, use or share surveillance data for personal reasons, while House Bill 1010 would largely bar government agencies from operating Flock cameras altogether, giving agencies already using them 30 days to shut the systems down. A separate measure, Senate Bill 469, would require agencies to delete Flock data after just 10 days and obtain a search warrant before sharing it with another government agency.
Cameras Credited in Other Local Cases
Akron police have pointed to other recent successes with the system. Officers used Flock data to locate a missing 77-year-old man with dementia within minutes of entering his vehicle information, according to News 5 Cleveland. In Medina, officers used the same Flock network to try to locate a missing 75-year-old woman who had driven more than 2.5 hours from home, the station reports.
Even as critics cite privacy concerns and a lack of transparency about how the technology is used, police continue to defend its role in violent-crime investigations like Richardson's case.
