Police charge man with murder after 1 killed, 3 injured at Durham apartments

Police arrested a suspect in a shooting at a Durham apartment complex Wednesday night that left one man dead and three others injured.

Officers were dispatched at 10:13 p.m. to Duke University Hospital after four people came in with gunshot wounds, according to a Durham Police Department news release.

One man was pronounced dead soon after he arrived.

Police identified him Thursday afternoon as 27-year-old Nelson Mendez-Vasquez of Durham and said they had charged Yeltsin Cinto Orozco, 29, with murder.

A woman who had been shot suffered life-threatening injuries and two other men shot suffered non-life-threatening injuries.

Investigators later determined the shooting occurred in the 300 block of South LaSalle Street, just south of the Durham Freeway and close to the hospital. Media outlets reported the shooting took place at Duke Manor Apartments.

Police have not said whether Orozco is a suspect in the other shootings or released any other details.

More people shot in Durham this year

After trailing last year’s data for most of 2024, more people have now been shot in Durham this year than by the same time last year.

As of Saturday, May 4, there had been at least 66 people shot this year, up from 64 by the same time in 2023, according to police department crime statistics. Those numbers were both down from 2022, however, when 87 people had been shot by the same time of the year.

And while more people have been shot this year, fewer of those shootings have been fatal.

Twelve people shot as of Saturday, had died, compared to 16 and 15 people fatally shot by the same time in 2023 and 2022, respectively.

Durham, like many cities, struggles with gun violence

Just last week police investigated two multiple shootings that left a 17-year-old boy and a man dead.

All told five people were shot in those incidents, with two of the remaining three people suffering life-threatening injuries, police said.

How is Durham responding to gun violence?

The city tried a pilot gunshot-surveillance program for a year, then dropped it after a review by Duke University researchers found it got police to shooting scenes more quickly and led to more arrests but did not reduce gun violence in the target areas.

The city and county are also investing in alternatives to traditional policing, including expanding the Bull City United program, which sends trained “violence interrupters,” some of them former gang members, into neighborhoods to de-escalate tensions and try to reduce retaliatory shootings.

Still, the Police Department is operating with 140 vacancies, or about 26% of its 535 sworn (officer) positions, according to the most recent department data.

That means just over 1 in 4 police positions in the city is unfilled.

How to help

Police are asking anyone with information about Wednesday night’s shooting to contact Investigator J. Sokal at 919-560-4440 ext. 29238 or CrimeStoppers at 919-683-1200 or online at www.durhamcrimestoppers.org.

CrimeStoppers pays rewards of up to $2,000 for information leading to arrests in felony cases, and callers never have to identify themselves.

We will update this story as we get more information.