Jahari Stegall

Jahari Stegall was a 17 year old Cleveland, Ohio teenager whose death outside a neighborhood store in September 2025 became one of the city's most closely followed homicide cases of the year. He was not a public figure before his death; he became known to the wider public only because of the senseless and public way he was killed, and because of the court case that followed. Jahari Jistin Stegall was born on December 22, 2007, and lived in Cleveland's North Collinwood neighborhood.

On the evening of September 19, 2025, Jahari walked across the parking lot of the E. 185th Deli, a convenience store on East 185th Street in North Collinwood. Investigators later said that a younger acquaintance, Royal King, then 17, had driven to the store in a stolen car, waited inside for several minutes, and met Jahari at the front door with a handgun as he walked in. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O'Malley said King shot Jahari in the back of the head and fled the scene. Jahari was pronounced dead at the scene by Cleveland EMS.

The case drew significant attention in Cleveland because of the circumstances: surveillance video appeared to show King waiting for Jahari rather than encountering him by chance, and O'Malley said publicly that Jahari barely knew the boy accused of killing him. The killing came amid a violent weekend in Cleveland that included several other homicides, prompting at least one city councilman to call for urgent action on gun violence in the neighborhood.

King fled after the shooting and was the subject of a public manhunt for weeks before U.S. Marshals, working with Cleveland police, arrested him. He was initially held in juvenile detention before the state moved to try him as an adult. He was indicted on charges including aggravated murder, murder, felonious assault, and weapons offenses. In October 2026, as his jury trial was about to begin, King pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, kidnapping, and felonious assault, each with a firearm specification, bringing the criminal case toward its conclusion without a trial.

Jahari's family held a wake and memorial service at Pernel Jones and Sons Funeral Home in Cleveland on October 18, 2025. Friends and family also raised money through an online fundraiser organized on behalf of his mother, Connie Harris, to help cover funeral costs, describing his life as having been cut short by gun violence in his own neighborhood. He is remembered by those who knew him as a teenager whose death, coming at the hands of someone prosecutors said he barely knew, shocked his community and renewed calls for action on youth violence in Cleveland.