Dad makes impassioned plea to help find soldier son's killer

Fayetteville police say they have few leads in the shooting death of Pfc. Chad Dellit, who was found dead outside an Innkeeper Hotel on Sept. 21.

Posted 5:08 p.m. Oct 7, 2011 — Updated 1:11 a.m. May 31, 2015

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — The parents of a Fort Bragg soldier who was shot and killed outside a Fayetteville hotel in 2011 continue to plead with the public to help find their son's killer.

Pfc. Chad Patrick Dellit, 22, was shot in the head outside the Innkeeper Hotel at 1720 Skibo Road sometime at 11:08 p.m. on Sept. 21.

Police detectives say they have few leads but are looking for a man seen on surveillance video running from the area as well as a man caught on security video at a nearby convenience store that night.

They have not released a motive for the crime but have said that Dellit was visiting someone at the hotel and that it didn't appear as if anything had been stolen from him.

Dellit's father, Todd Dellit, is convinced somebody in that busy area of Fayetteville had to see something.

"For somebody to take him out like this was wrong," Todd Dellit said Friday. "What I'm asking for is for the people of Fayetteville to come through for me, to help me find this guy that took him out, that did this to him."

Gavin MacRoberts, a spokesman for the Fayetteville Police Department, has said that police were called to the Innkeeper less than two hours prior to finding Chad Dellit lying between two cars.

A woman had reported hearing gunshots and seeing someone run from the scene. A nearby security camera showed a man in a white, long-sleeve shirt and dark pants in the parking lot around the same time.

Police released the photo from the convenience store on Friday of a man also wearing a white, long-sleeve shirt and dark pants.

He is approximately 25 to 35 years old, has a dark skin tone, stands 5 feet 8 inches tall to 6 feet tall and weighs approximately 160 to 200 pounds. He either is bald or has short hair.

Investigators believe he might be a transient who known to have recently spent time in the Cross Creek Mall area of Fayetteville.

Anyone who recognizes the man in either image or remembers seeing a man wearing similar clothes on the evening of Sept. 21 is asked to call the Fayetteville Police Department at 910-587-3254 or Crime Stoppers at 910-483-TIPS (8477).

Chad Dellit, of Fulton, Ill., was assigned to the 20th Engineer Brigade of Fort Bragg. He enlisted in the Army in September 2008.

"He wanted to be a lifer," his father said. "That was his dream. He wanted to be in for life. That's all he ever talked about."

Todd Dellit said he and his wife had prepared for the possibility that their son wouldn't return home if he were ever deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq, but he never had a chance to deploy.

"To end up on U.S. soil and someone to take a shot at him in a hotel parking lot, like that – this boy would have given the shirt off his back and helped anyone out," Todd Dellit said. "That's the way we raised him."

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