Police to give updates on recent murder cases

The commander of the Mount Vernon District Police Station will be giving an update Tuesday evening on four recent murder cases in the Richmond Highway area.

Capt. Brian Ruck, along with Mount Vernon District Supervisor Dan Storck and Lee District Supervisor Rodney Lusk, will be hosting the community meeting at Mount Vernon High School at 7 p.m.

While arrests have been made in three of the homicide cases, police have said all three investigations remained ongoing.

Here’s the four homicide cases, along with the last update on them from police:

• Richard Hernandez Cruz, 16, was found murdered in a shallow grave in the North Hill woods in May 2019. Three men and a juvenile have been charged in connection with Hernandez Cruz’s death, with one man and the juvenile facing murder charges. Police have said the crime was gang-related and the investigation remained active as of their last update on December 5. At least some of the initial charges against two of the three men arrested have been dropped, according to court records.
  
• Xyqwavius Brown, 19, was shot multiple times in the Meadows Woods apartment complex in Hybla Valley on October 26, 2019. Police said at the time that the shooting was not believed to be random. No arrests have been made in the case, and no update has been given since the incident happened.
  
• Micale Kebede, 31, was found murdered on December 18, 2019 near a a bridge along Old Mill Road in the Mount Vernon area. Malik Salam, 41, was arrested shortly after and was then charged with second-degree murder last month. No motive for the killing has been announced, although police did say that Kebede and Salam were acquainted and that the murder did not happen where the body was found. Salam is due in court for a preliminary hearing in May, according to court records.
  
• Jayden Quick, 20, was shot and killed on December 30 in the Sequyah neighborhood. His 18-year-old brother also suffered critical injuries in the shooting. Jeremiah Mouzon, 20, was arrested a few days after the shooting and charged with second-degree murder. No motive for the murder has been announced. Mouzon is next due in court for a preliminary hearing in April, according to court records.

The four homicides were part of a spike in violence in the Richmond Highway area that included three shootings in late June and early July that left a total of six people injured. Those shootings, which included a broad daylight gunfight caught on security cameras, were addressed by police and local leaders at three public meetings called shortly after they happened. To date no arrests have been made in those cases.

While the summertime shootings were said to be connected and gang-related, it’s unclear if any of the four murders are related in any way.

The most recent serious shooting in the area happened on January 23, when a man was critically wounded after being shot multiple times near Lockheed Boulevard. That shooting was not far from the site of the October murder of Xyqwavius Brown.