A Montgomery County grand jury has indicted 17-year-old Nat’Shaun Shaw on two counts of murder in connection with the July 2025 shooting death of 18-year-old Santana Buchanon, whose body was found slumped in the passenger seat of a stolen car near Gerlaugh and Bierce avenues in Dayton. Shaw, who was 16 at the time of the shooting, is now set to be arraigned as an adult.
According to WHIO TV, the grand jury indicted Shaw on two counts of murder, six counts of felonious assault, and one count each of discharging a firearm on or near prohibited premises and having weapons while under disability. As Dayton Daily News reports, Shaw is accused of shooting and killing Buchanon last July, when Shaw was 16.
What Police Found on Gerlaugh Avenue
Around 1:45 a.m. on July 28, 2025, Dayton police responded to a report of a suspicious vehicle near Gerlaugh and Bierce avenues, per the same account. Officers arrived to find Buchanon slumped over the passenger seat with a gun on the floor, along with broken glass and shell casings scattered around the vehicle. A 911 caller had described seeing a car with both front doors open and windows that were, in the caller's words, “busted out” on Gerlaugh Avenue near Bierce Avenue, according to Dayton 24/7 Now.
Investigators determined the vehicle had been stolen, the report states. They also determined that one of the shooters seated in the rear of the stolen car shot Buchanon while he sat in the front passenger seat — though the reporting does not identify Shaw as that shooter.
A Second Vehicle Was Also Hit
The Montgomery County Prosecutor's Office said shots were fired from inside the stolen vehicle toward another vehicle carrying two unarmed occupants, striking that car and wounding its passenger in the arm, the outlet's report notes. That detail underlies the felonious assault counts included in Shaw's indictment.
Judge Helen Wallace approved a motion to transfer Shaw's case from juvenile court to common pleas court following a hearing on September 29, the Dayton Daily News reported. Shaw is being held in the Montgomery County Juvenile Detention Center and is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday as an adult.
Youth Transfers to Adult Court Are Climbing Statewide
Shaw's case fits into a broader pattern tracked statewide. An ACLU of Ohio analysis found that 175 young people were bound over to adult court in Ohio in 2023, with 63 of them 17 years old. The organization also reported that 144 of those 175 youth, or 82.3%, were Black.
The same analysis found that murder accounted for 35.4% of Ohio youth transfers to adult court in 2023, up sharply from just 12% of transfers in 2020. That share climbed steadily each year in between, rising to 20.3% in 2021 and 26.9% in 2022, according to the ACLU of Ohio's figures.
