On the night of July 25, 2022, police officers in Akron, Ohio were sent to an apartment in the 2200 block of Maryland Avenue.
The original call sounded serious but still frustratingly vague.
Someone was shooting.
A woman had been hurt.
That was almost all responding officers knew.
They did not know who had fired the gun.
They did not know how many people were involved.
They did not know whether the shooter was still inside.
And they did not know that by the time they entered the apartment, the beginning of a month-long manhunt had already taken place.
Inside the living room was a 34-year-old woman named Tony Westover.
She was a medical assistant.
A mother.
And when officers found her, she was lying motionless on the floor.
She was not breathing.
Gunshot wounds were visible around her neck and torso.
Emergency medical assistance would still be requested because that was protocol.
But the officers looking at her understood immediately that the situation was no longer simply a shooting call.
Tony was dead.
Someone inside that apartment had killed her.
And almost everyone who might have been able to explain exactly what happened had already disappeared.
One of the witnesses told police that several people had fled through the back.
That detail immediately changed the investigation.
If one person had fired in panic and remained there, officers might have had an obvious suspect.
Instead, multiple people had run.
Some apparently jumped from a rear balcony.
Others had gone through a sliding door.
Now police were looking at a room with a dead woman, several missing witnesses, a bullet that had passed through a wall, signs of drug use, and a collection of people who seemed to know one another only loosely.
Even identifying who had been inside became confusing.
Names came quickly.
Brian.
Adam.
Quinton.
Ashley.
Ron.
Angel.
Tony.
Some lived there.
Some did not.
Some had been invited by someone else.
Some barely knew the victim.
One was Tony's boyfriend.
Another had apparently been staying in the apartment for a few days.
And one man, Quinton Nixon, would soon become the person police wanted more than anyone else.
But in those first minutes, officers had no clean version of events.
All they had was chaos.
And a dead mother on the living room floor.
A Party That Became a Crime Scene
The apartment belonged to a woman named Angel.
She lived there with a roommate named Ron.
According to the accounts eventually given to investigators, the gathering that night had not begun as anything especially significant.
Friends were hanging out.
People were talking.
Angel and Ron were familiar with some of those present.
Others were acquaintances brought by friends.
Adam had apparently been staying there for several days.
Through him, other people entered the gathering.
Tony arrived with her boyfriend, Brian Felder.
Quinton Nixon was there as well.
Ashley was present.
Seven people in total were connected to the apartment around the time of the shooting.
That number would matter because police now had to answer a basic question:
Who saw what?
Angel had not actually watched Tony get shot.
Neither had everyone else.
She and others had been in another room putting up lights when the violence began.
That was important.
The people closest to the shooting had been in the living room.
Tony.
Brian.
Quinton.
And, at least for part of the time, Adam.
Everything had apparently seemed normal at first.
People laughed.
Talked.
Hung out.
No one had entered the apartment announcing that a confrontation was about to happen.
No one called police before the gunfire.
Then the atmosphere changed.
And one small object placed on a table would become central to the entire case.
Tony had a handgun.
According to the witnesses, she removed it from her bag and placed it on the living-room table.
At that moment it was her weapon.
Minutes later, prosecutors would argue, it became the weapon that killed her.
That is one of the most striking details in the case.
The killer did not necessarily arrive carrying the murder weapon in his hand.
It was already sitting inside the room.
Available.
Close enough for someone to reach.
And whatever tension developed next happened around that table.
The Whisper App
The conversation reportedly shifted toward an app called Whisper.
Whisper was designed around relatively anonymous posting and communication.
But inside that apartment, according to the witnesses later interviewed by police, the discussion became something far more paranoid.
Quinton allegedly began talking about the possibility that the app could be used by police informants.
Somewhere during that conversation, his behavior changed.
He became suspicious.
Specifically, witnesses said he began suspecting that Tony and Brian might somehow be connected to law enforcement.
Undercover police.
Informants.
People who were not what they appeared to be.
Whether that suspicion was connected to the methamphetamine use reported around the apartment cannot be established simply from the transcript.
The source does note that meth had been used by people connected to the scene and that the drug can increase paranoia and agitation.
But investigators still had to determine what actually happened rather than simply blame a substance.
Something inside Quinton's thinking had apparently shifted.
A conversation about an app became suspicion.
Suspicion became confrontation.
Then Quinton allegedly reached for Tony's gun.
Once he had it, the entire balance of power in the room changed.
Tony tried to get the weapon back.
Brian told Quinton to calm down.
According to witnesses, a physical struggle developed.
At one point, others coming from the adjacent room reportedly saw Quinton holding Tony by the hair while the gun was pointed toward her head.
Then those witnesses moved away again.
Exactly what happened during every second that followed would later become one of the biggest disputes in the case.
But everyone agreed on what they heard next.
Gunshots.
Multiple shots.
Angel estimated four or five.
At least one bullet went through a wall.
It passed dangerously close to where people were standing.
It struck or ricocheted around a television in another room.
This was no longer violence contained between two people.
Anyone inside that apartment could have been hit.
Then the shooting stopped.
Tony was on the floor.
Brian Fights Back
According to the prosecution's version assembled from witness statements, Adam heard the shots and came from the kitchen carrying his own firearm.
He saw Tony on the ground.
Quinton was standing nearby.
Brian reacted.
He lunged at Quinton.
The two men began wrestling.
This was not a controlled attempt to disarm somebody from a distance.
It was close.
Physical.
Desperate.
According to the accounts provided to investigators, Brian even bit Quinton in the face during the struggle.
But Quinton managed to get away.
Before leaving, he took Tony's bag.
Then he ran.
Brian and Adam also left the apartment through the rear.
From Angel's perspective, that looked deeply confusing.
Gunfire.
A woman on the floor.
Three men fleeing.
When police arrived, that confusion naturally created suspicion around everyone who had run.
Why would innocent witnesses leave?
Why would Tony's own boyfriend leave his girlfriend behind?
Had this been some kind of coordinated attack?
Had multiple men been involved?
Were witnesses now trying to blame the one person who was missing?
Police could not simply accept the first explanation they heard.
Every person had to be located.
Every story had to be compared.
And in the first minutes, even Brian was a logical person to investigate.
He was Tony's boyfriend.
He had been in the room.
He had fled.