Fayetteville police tasked with mitigating problem of record homicides in 2023

The amount of homicides across the country was down in 2023.

But that wasn't the case in Fayetteville. The city broke the record in 2023 for the homicides in a year with 49.

One of those victims was Lorenzo McLaughlin Jr. He died when shots rang out at Seabrook Park.

In 2023, Wake County reported 56 homicides, also a record high and the third year in a row the number was above 50. Durham County recorded 49 homicides.

Twenty-year-old Devonte McClain and his 18-year-old brother, Adriane, are charged with shooting and killing McLaughlin Jr.

"My son was full of life," said father Lorenzo McLaughlin. "He just liked to be the life of the party. He was just fun to be around. Parents liked him, little brothers, big brothers, he was just a fun person."

James Daniel Jr. was also part of the alarming number. He's one of 49 homicide victims in Fayetteville from 2023.

"He was running and it started over here at Family Dollar and then he ended up getting shot in the back right over here and he fell in the front of the barber shop door," said Jalana Daniel, James' sister.

"He was a great young man," said father James Daniel. "He was caring. He would give you the shirt off his back. He would always help people. He was very mannerable. He was never disrespectful."

Forty nine breaks the previous record of 48 homicides set in Fayetteville back in 2021. There were 44 homicides in 2022. Fayetteville Police Chief Kem Braden said his department is doing everything it can to mitigate the violence.

"We do our best to mitigate," said Braden. "If we see something happening, we realign what we're doing, put officers in an area where we can best respond to the thing that we see going on live."

Braden said during the past three decades the city's population and size has more than doubled. He said in addition, the city had an unprecedented year where several juveniles were killed.

"We have the 5-month-old, Brooklyn, just recently in December and going all the way back to where these three infants have died due to gun violence," Braden said. "Those are situations that their parents sort of placed them in. They were with their parents at the time that they were killed."

Braden said there were actually 51 deaths in Fayetteville in 2023. He's waiting on the medical examiner to determine if two of them are officially homicides.

While some parts of our area saw more murders in 2023, that's not the trend nationwide. Last year, more than 8,900 people were killed in the U.S. That's down from more than 10,000 the year before, which is a 13 percent drop.

Still, there was a sharp increase in the last several years, meaning that, despite this year's decrease, our numbers are elevated compared to 2019.