OKC police find suspect in 2010 store killing
Oklahoma City police say they have cracked the cold case killing of a convenience store employee after matching the suspect's fingerprints to those found at the scene.
Darrell Deshonne Brown, 33, is already serving a life sentence for a 2012 double murder. Last week, prosecutors filed charges against Brown in the 2010 shooting death of convenience store worker Prashanth Goinaka.
Goinaka was killed during a robbery at Oklahoma City store. According to documents filed alongside the first-degree murder charge against Brown, three men were seen running from the scene after the shooting.
Surveillance video showed two of the men brandishing guns inside the store. One of them, identified by police as Brown, forced Goinaka to the ground and began taking cash from the register and his wallet. Even though Goinaka complied, video shows the robber firing a handgun into his back as he laid on the ground. Five casings were found.
Goinaka was a 27-year-old student from Hyderabad, India, who had just arrived in the United States to earn a post-graduate business degree. He was only in Oklahoma City temporarily and was helping a friend watch the store.
Brown is currently incarcerated at Lawton Correctional Facility, serving two life sentences for murdering two people during a drug deal in 2012. According to the prosecution, Brown was upset because he received methamphetamine instead of crack cocaine.
Police found fingerprints at the scene of the 2010 killing but were unable to match the prints to a suspect until 2021.
According to a police affidavit, the match was initially misreported and not forwarded to the Cold Case Homicide Unit until this year.
During an interview with police in October after he was linked to the scene, Brown told detectives that he was not involved in either the robbery or the homicide, and had never worked in the store.