Who Killed Devan Sanders? A Community's Loss

Devan Sanders came home from work around 11 p.m. on a stormy August night in 2018. Something — or someone — drew him back outside into the rain. He was found shot to death on the side of his own house hours later, steps from his front door in Dayton, Ohio. He was 25 years old. He worked two jobs, drove relief supplies to Flint, Michigan, and once saved a stranger's life without ever knowing it. His killer has never been caught. Today, we sit down with the woman who supervised him at a local nonprofit, who has waited seven years for answers that have never come. This is the unsolved murder of Devan Sanders.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

We're here with Marcia Elmers, who is who was the boss of Devin Sanders at a nonprofit, and we're talking about his cold case, which he was killed by gunshot in 2018, and nobody knows who killed him. So Marcia, what was Devin like?

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Devin was a wonderful young man. He was with a program for youth in Montgomery County, where we lived, where he lived and I live. And he they pay young people, 14 and older, to be part of the nonprofit world. So he was paid um to volunteer to work through uh Good Neighbor House. And I was his supervisor for a couple years. And he was just dynamic. I mean, just a fun-loving uh kid. He nothing was too hard for him. He never said no, you know, any job or task. The clients loved him, staff loved him. And he then graduated out of the program, graduated high school, and we still stayed in touch. I would hear from him every once in a while. He would still stop by the nonprofit just to see how I was doing. Um, and then he would donate back. So he worked at a store, he worked at a Sears store that was going to shut down in that mall. And he one day went into the dumpsters and found some of the prepaid phones that had not been activated yet. And he brought them to my place because he said, you know, there's people that come in to utilize your services who might not be able to afford a phone. And I had a stack of them from him, and I gave them to a friend of mine who's in law enforcement to use for his um people that he would run into. And the officer called me and said, Hey, my neighbor has no Wi-Fi, no power, we don't know what's going on. Do you mind if I activate one of these for an emergency in case she would need it? That very night, she had a heart attack at home by herself. She was bedridden and was able to call for help and call her neighbor, the officer who came over and got the whole ball rolling. She spent several weeks in the hospital, but it saved her life. And um the officer wrote a letter of accommodation to Devon, and after he was murdered, they found it in his Bible by his night. Oh wow. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Um it says he drove relief supplies to Flint, Michigan when they were having a water crisis.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

He did that. He worked then in another retail um job, and he would actually use his own money to buy gift cards. If you would donate uh to nonprofits, he would put you in a raffle and um help you out with gift cards. You could win a gift card. He had just this giving spirit. I mean, he was just a daring soul.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Sounds like he was pretty creative too to get do that raffle gift card thing as well.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

He was extremely creative, and that's that's the thing, you know, obviously the loss of a friend, but the biggest thing is how much were we as a community, how much were we robbed by whoever did this to him? Because, you know, he was so young when he passed. How much work did he have been doing, you know, as an adult? He worked hard, he worked, you know, was always working even as a young person. Um he was trying to finish up with school and you know, college, some training programs, um, and make his way in the world. And he came even in an early age, making his way in the world included taking care of his community and those people in it.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Yeah. And the night of his murder, um his sister, I think his sister um got word that he had been killed. And then I believe it said here his mother uh went to find him, like somebody called them and then said he's over here or whatever. And then um they went and found him and he was dead. Um did they know who called?

SPEAKER_00 4:28

So this the mother, I was at the house the very next morning. Um the mother, he lived with his mother, his sister, and his brother, and it was a very rainy, stormy night, lots of thunder and lightning, and his mother said that she always had the TV up loud because it was kind of a um high crimer, and she would keep it up loud to blot out the noises in the neighborhood. And he came home. He had gone out or had gotten off work, but it was you know 11 o'clock ish at night, and he had come home. And she heard him come in and she then turned her TV up. And you know, because it was storming so loud, there was other noise, whatever, she just wasn't, you know, focused on him going back out again. Somebody called him, or somehow he was he left the house. He didn't get far because he was found to the side of his house by his brother very early the next morning. And they called, I went over. It w it was just it was just such a horrible, tragic end, you know, and there had been no no answers as to what happened to him. And again, you know, my biggest thing is such a kind, caring young man who would literally do anything for you. You know, we we've missed out this community because of him not being here. And yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Did they at all investigate who called him right before he left?

SPEAKER_00 6:02

I don't know the depth of law enforcement involved.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Yeah, I understand.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how how deep that went. I don't know, you know, what happened as far as law enforcement. I had brought it to the attention of um somebody who was in law enforcement a while later and said, hey, where does this stand? And and it just, you know, I hadn't gotten any clear answers as to, you know, what's going on with it.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

And we've we've tried to contact law enforcement about this case and nobody returns our calls. So that's another thing as far as you know what we're doing to investigate it. Um but the violent crime in uh Dayton, Ohio seems to be um pretty pretty uh it's considered one of the most dangerous cities in the United States. What do you have to say about that?

SPEAKER_00 6:50

I don't know statistically where we stand. I think this world, the whole world is, you know, definitely uh not a safe place. And I mean, you know, certainly you have to take precautions no matter where you live. You have to have an extra set of eyes on where you live. Um, but violent crime, no matter what community you live in, it affects all of us. I mean, it it it's something that if we're not a victim ourselves, we probably know somebody who has been a victim. And, you know, sadly, this this was my story through him, you know, that I experienced the taking of a young life. Um and again, I have I haven't felt closure yet because there is no resolution, and I don't know why that is or what we can do. I think you're taking some steps in the right direction in keeping it out there and making people know that um you know violence it doesn't just affect the person you might have, you know, an issue with. It affects multiple layers, it affects the community as a whole. Um, and you know, I know that there's a lot of um programs and there's a lot of law enforcement that go above and beyond and a lot of programs that are in place to make our community safer, and I'm grateful for that. Um I can only speak in this situation where you know we've all been victimized because of the loss of this young man.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

Right, right. Now, um, did he at all live in a bad neighborhood?

SPEAKER_00 8:32

I mean, in this day and age, I think every neighborhood has probably a bad neighborhood, you know. Right. I mean, we hear stories that it doesn't social economics and whatever. Um, you know, I know that it would his mother had even stated, you know, how again with the TV and keeping it up because of the noise level of the you know activity in the neighborhood. Um, so you know, any area I think has the potential to be a bad neighborhood if again, I think stopping the violence and contributing to, you know, resolutions as to why things have happened goes a long way in helping even neighborhoods that might be considered unsafe or a violent neighborhood. Um, it goes a long way into helping helping fix that. And you know, we we need to do what's in front of us and we need to do our part. And if that means walking away instead of getting in an argument, if that means um like doing what you're doing, making um something that was so unjust have a little bit of resolution to it, then we that that's what we're here for. That's you know what we should be doing.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Right. Well, uh thank you, Marcia, and uh this has been a great interview and I'll call you right back.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

All right, thank you, sir, for all you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

No problem.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

Okay.