By Shawn Henry 
A stolen SUV became a rolling crime scene in East Grand Rapids, and a 16-year-old boy is dead because of it. Around 12:30 a.m., police responded to reports of a man lying unconscious near Lake Drive SE and Plymouth Avenue SE. What they found wasn’t a medical emergency. It was Carhari Walton, shot in the head and left in the middle of the street like discarded trash. Witnesses reported that the body had been pushed from a moving SUV as traffic continued around it.
Broken glass and shell casings littered a nearby intersection. This wasn’t random chaos. It was violence carried out inside a vehicle that never should have been on the road. Minutes later, officers were called to a vehicle fire on Nature Trail Drive SE. A stolen SUV was burning in a parking lot. Inside were more shell casings. The vehicle had been reported stolen five days earlier.
Investigators determined Walton had last been seen in that SUV with 21-year-old Dellquan Cartier Willis and another suspect. Willis admitted he was driving when the shots were fired inside the cabin. He initially claimed they were being shot at, but that story collapsed under the weight of the evidence. He later admitted to shooting Walton.
Willis is already serving time in Marquette Branch Prison for armed robbery and now faces additional murder and felony firearm charges. This wasn’t a high-speed chase. It wasn’t a dramatic standoff. It was a stolen vehicle used as a mobile execution chamber, followed by an attempt to erase the evidence in flames.
Eve Nowell