Baltimore Police are asking anyone who recognizes two people captured on surveillance footage to come forward, as homicide detectives continue trying to identify them in connection with the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Darnell Riley III in the Howard Park neighborhood. Officers were called to the 3500 block of Plateau Avenue shortly after midnight on October 2, where they found a man suffering from gunshot wounds. Medics pronounced him dead at the scene.
According to WBFF, police have released surveillance video and photos of the two people as homicide detectives continue working to identify them. The station reports that anyone with information is asked to call detectives at 410-396-2100, or submit an anonymous tip through Metro Crime Stoppers.
Who Was Darnell Riley III
The victim was identified as 22-year-old Darnell Riley III, according to the same WBFF report. A separate account from crimesolverscentral.com describes him as a graduate of Forest Park Senior High School and the father of one child.
The Baltimore Sun separately identified the man killed in the early-morning Howard Park shooting as Darnell Riley III, in a report published Oct. 5 that placed the incident in Northwest Baltimore.
What Remains Unknown
Detectives have not said who the two people shown in the surveillance video and photographs are, what role they may have played, or whether anyone has been arrested or charged in connection with Riley's death.
A City Watching Its Homicide Numbers
The investigation comes as Baltimore officials and local media offer conflicting pictures of the city's broader homicide trend this year. A statement from Mayor Brandon M. Scott's office said the city has seen homicides fall 15.3 percent through September, citing 83 homicides in 2026 compared with 98 over the same period in 2025, according to the Baltimore City government.
But a later report from the Baltimore Sun described October homicides in the city as having doubled the prior year's total amid a string of mass shootings, a rise the paper said was testing the city's years-long decline in homicides and nonfatal shootings. The two accounts were not reconciled in available reporting, and it remains unclear how the October spike referenced by the Sun squares with the September figures cited by the mayor's office.
For now, the case of Darnell Riley III remains open, with homicide detectives relying on the public to help put names to the faces captured on camera near Plateau Avenue.
