Lead detective says he won’t quit seeking gunmen in triple homicide

On Dec 7, 2022

Terrence Kelley, a detective with the Columbus Division of Police Homicide Unit, poses for a portrait Nov. 14 at police headquarters in downtown Columbus. Kelley is still looking for answers in the 2021 murders of Charles Wade and his two children, who were shot while in their car on the city's Southeast Side near Canal Winchester.

A year later, the raw emotions return again — and again — when Columbus Division of Police homicide Detective Terry Kelley reviews the body camera footage of officers arriving on the scene of a triple homicide on the city’s Southeast Side.

Looking for details he might have missed, Kelley still works to piece together information about who is responsible for killing the three victims — Charles Wade, 22, and his girlfriend’s two children, Londynn Wall-Neal, 6, and Demetrius Wall-Neal, 9 — in a hail of gunfire moments after they had entered a parked car Dec. 7, 2021, at the Winchester Lake Apartments near Canal Winchester.

“One of the things about homicide is you have to overrule your emotions sometimes,” Kelley said. “And that’s basically what everybody on the team had to do when we showed up on the scene — because this was easily one of the worst scenes I’ve ever been to.”

Londynn Wall-Neal, 6, and Demetrius Wall-Neal, 9, were fatally shot Dec. 7, 2021, along with their mother's boyfriend, 22-year-old Charles Wade, just after they entered a vehicle in the parking lot of an apartment complex on Columbus' Southeast Side.

As Kelley works to make strides in the year-old investigation, a city reflects on the catastrophic toll of the gun violence that includes this unsolved triple homicide involving two young children.

“Dealing with a homicide investigation involving small children, I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t take a toll or it didn’t change your outlook on things,” Kelley said. “Because it does.”

‘Do you know who killed us?’

The Wall-Neal siblings and Wade were killed in what Kelley has described as a targeted assassination.

Detective: Shooters knew children were in car prior to triple homicide in Columbus

A video released by police earlier this year, which was captured by a security camera at the Winchester Lakes Apartments, shows two gunmen approaching the parked car that Wade and the Wall-Neal siblings had just entered. Wade was planning to take the children to meet their mother, Brittany, for dinner at a nearby Buffalo Wild Wings.

Wade’s driver’s-side door was not yet closed when the gunmen, staying low to the ground and coming around two other parked cars, ran to the passenger side of the car and emptied their magazines in an execution-style assault. The gunfire lasted about 11 seconds.

The two then ran toward a getaway car, believed to be a 2010 Nissan Altima with no license plate, that had been backed up from a spot nearby in the parking lot to meet them. As one gunman entered the rear driver’s side and the other in the front passenger seat, the driver turned on the car’s lights and they sped off.

Autopsy reports from the Franklin County Coroner’s office showed all three victims were shot multiple times, with 9-year-old Demetrius and Wade sustaining more than a dozen gunshot wounds each.

Investigation ‘extraordinarily complicated’

Kelley has been working on the investigation nearly every day since the homicides occurred.

Although he wouldn’t provide any specific updates on the case, he said the investigation into the deaths of Wade and the Wall-Neal siblings has expanded as other investigations into other crimes have become involved.

“Just recently,” Kelley said, “there have been some major strides” in the investigation.

“What it has done is it’s brought certain aspects of the investigation into more focus,” he said. “And I know that’s somewhat cryptic — I know that that’s probably not the answer a lot of people are wanting to hear — but I am going to do absolutely everything I can to find the people that did this.”

Information from the public, Kelley said, has been useful in narrowing some of the scope of his investigation. He said he is hoping that someone who knows something will contact him.

“I need to know what people saw. I need to know what people were talking about,” Kelley said. “If they heard somebody talking about that specific incident, I need to narrow the scope down a little bit to help me get to the point where I can file charges on people.”

The tragedy of gun violence

Demetrius Wall-Neal was a fourth-grader at Winchester Trail Elementary School in the Canal Winchester Local School District. He was a pee-wee football player in Reynoldsburg and idolized some of the game’s great players. And he was a hard worker, always lending a hand to anyone who needed it.

His sister, Londynn Wall-Neal, was in kindergarten at Canal Winchester schools’ Indian Trail Elementary School, loved lip gloss and never left home without a purse.

Grandmother of young homicide victims:‘They didn’t have to kill those babies.’

Family members for the Wall-Neals and Wade declined to comment for this story.

Earlier this year, the siblings’ mother organized a school-supplies drive in their honor at Canal Winchester schools, WCMH-TV (NBC4) reported.

At a recent Columbus City Council public forum on proposed gun reform legislation, several elected officials reflected on the impact that the triple homicide has had on the family and the residents of the city.

“The tragedy of gun violence leaves a lingering effect on everyone,” council member Shayla Favor said.

“The level of trauma that the community or police may experience cannot compare to what a mother experiences burying not one, but two children at the same time,” Favor said. “However, I will never be able to get those visions out of mind, of seeing that level of violence being directed upon little ones who did not even have an opportunity to get started in life.”

Mayor Andrew J. Ginther said more work was needed to protect children in the city from gun violence.

“Think about the world and how the dangers to our children have changed in such a short span of time,” Ginther said. “Just like so many communities across our country, our city is being robbed of its most precious asset — our people.”

Kelley said he is asked from time to time about gun control. He said he doesn’t care for the politics and focuses on bringing justice to victim’s families.

“So when they ask me that, I just say, ‘I don’t have the ability to worry about the politics,’” Kelley said. “And just worry about the families of the people that I’m serving, the justice that I can get for them, regardless of the politics.”

‘I’m not going to quit’

2021 was a second straight record year for homicides in Columbus. Many of the 205 victims last year were children — or their deaths were perpetrated by children.

“It’s hard to fathom how somebody could shoot a kid,” Kelley said. “It’s still hard to fathom that, but it’s not as surprising as it used to be, which is sad in and of itself.”

Amid the record number of homicides and a shortage of detectives, Kelley said, he and others in the Division of Police’s Homicide Unit needed to “treat every investigation the same way regardless of how old or young the person is.”

“You just were just stuck doing your job the entire time,” Kelley said. “You just basically had to focus on what you were doing.”

With the case involving the Wall-Neal siblings and Wade, he said, he has been taking a methodical approach because of the scarcity of evidence at the beginning of the investigation.

“When you get an investigation where you don’t have much evidence to begin with, you have to look at different avenues,” Kelley said. “There’s always evidence there; you just have to figure out where it’s at.”

Kelley, like other investigators, said he doesn’t like to lose to the perpetrators behind killings.

“I can’t make a promise that I’m going to make an arrest,” Kelley said. “What I can promise is that I’m not going to quit. Not that (the case) is even remotely about me. But they deserve that.”