REVISITED: The Friends

[gentle music] Around five twenty PM on Tuesday, June fourth, twenty nineteen, a man and his girlfriend parked their car on the side of Valley Parkway inside Rocky River Reservation.

The summer evening was a balmy seventy-five degrees, and there were people walking and biking throughout this section of the park.

But almost as soon as the man got out of his car, before he could even start unpacking his kayak gear, he stopped because he saw something odd straight ahead of him further off the roadway.

It was a man slumped over, lying next to a park bench near the water's edge.

Fearful the guy on the ground might need some medical attention, the kayaker decided to go check on him.

However, when he got to the man on the ground, he noticed there was blood spattered near his head and body, and the guy appeared to have been shot more than once.

Right away, the Good Samaritan backed off and yelled over to his girlfriend to call nine one one.

Not far away from the guy on the ground, further toward the water, he saw a woman's body lying face down.

She was half on the banks and half in the river and appeared to also have been shot.

Within minutes of receiving the call from the kayaker, officers from the Cleveland Metro Parks Police Department arrived on scene and discovered exactly what the nine one one caller had described: two bodies laying out in the open in one of the most trafficked corridors of the park.

Right away, officers could tell the first victim they'd reached had been shot at least twice in the head.

He was a Black man who appeared to be middle-aged and was laying in the grass near the park bench.

A few feet in front of him, slightly down an embankment on the river, was a woman who looked to be in her thirties, and she'd been shot once in the back of her head and was lying face down, partially in the water.

Fox 8 News reported that near the bodies, officers located several spent shell casings and collected them as evidence.

Not far from both victims, authorities found two cars parked in a small lot, sort of like a pull-off, just north of what's called the Lorain Road Bridge, which if you look at a map or picture of this area, the bridge is a large metal structure that runs perpendicular over Valley Parkway.

The vehicles authorities found in the small lot were a Toyota and a Mazda.

The source material isn't clear on how exactly authorities identified the victims.

Like, I don't know if they had IDs on them or what, but shortly after finding them, Metro Parks police detectives realized the man and woman were 40-year-old Karnell Sledge, who was from the nearby town of North Olmsted, and 33-year-old Catherine Kate Brown, who was from the city of Fairview Park.

Cleveland 19 reported that the parked Toyota belonged to Karnell and the Mazda was registered to Kate.

According to Peter Krause's reporting for cleveland.com, detectives notified Karnell's parents, Carl and Darlene, in the early morning hours of Wednesday, June 5th, and Kate's parents, Tom and Kim, got word around that same time.

Later Wednesday morning, investigators released the names of the two victims to the public, and the day after that, Thursday, June 6th, the Cleveland Metroparks Detective Bureau and the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office held a joint press conference to announce more information in the case.

But officials' remarks were brief, and they didn't take any questions.

The only pertinent information that came out of the announcement was that Karnell had suffered multiple gunshot wounds to his head, and Kate had been shot once in the back of her head.

Both of their deaths were being considered homicides.

During the presser, the chief of the Cleveland Metroparks Police Department said that all the evidence detectives had gathered so far pointed to the murders being the result of an isolated incident and that no one should feel unsafe in the park.

[gentle music] Around five twenty PM on Tuesday, June fourth, twenty nineteen, a man and his girlfriend parked their car on the side of Valley Parkway inside Rocky River Reservation.

The summer evening was a balmy seventy-five degrees, and there were people walking and biking throughout this section of the park.

But almost as soon as the man got out of his car, before he could even start unpacking his kayak gear, he stopped because he saw something odd straight ahead of him further off the roadway.

It was a man slumped over, lying next to a park bench near the water's edge.

Fearful the guy on the ground might need some medical attention, the kayaker decided to go check on him.

However, when he got to the man on the ground, he noticed there was blood spattered near his head and body, and the guy appeared to have been shot more than once.

Right away, the Good Samaritan backed off and yelled over to his girlfriend to call nine one one.

Not far away from the guy on the ground, further toward the water, he saw a woman's body lying face down.

She was half on the banks and half in the river and appeared to also have been shot.

Within minutes of receiving the call from the kayaker, officers from the Cleveland Metro Parks Police Department arrived on scene and discovered exactly what the nine one one caller had described: two bodies laying out in the open in one of the most trafficked corridors of the park.

Right away, officers could tell the first victim they'd reached had been shot at least twice in the head.

He was a Black man who appeared to be middle-aged and was laying in the grass near the park bench.

A few feet in front of him, slightly down an embankment on the river, was a woman who looked to be in her thirties, and she'd been shot once in the back of her head and was lying face down, partially in the water.

Fox 8 News reported that near the bodies, officers located several spent shell casings and collected them as evidence.

Not far from both victims, authorities found two cars parked in a small lot, sort of like a pull-off, just north of what's called the Lorain Road Bridge, which if you look at a map or picture of this area, the bridge is a large metal structure that runs perpendicular over Valley Parkway.

The vehicles authorities found in the small lot were a Toyota and a Mazda.

The source material isn't clear on how exactly authorities identified the victims.

Like, I don't know if they had IDs on them or what, but shortly after finding them, Metro Parks police detectives realized the man and woman were 40-year-old Karnell Sledge, who was from the nearby town of North Olmsted, and 33-year-old Catherine Kate Brown, who was from the city of Fairview Park.

Cleveland 19 reported that the parked Toyota belonged to Karnell and the Mazda was registered to Kate.

According to Peter Krause's reporting for cleveland.com, detectives notified Karnell's parents, Carl and Darlene, in the early morning hours of Wednesday, June 5th, and Kate's parents, Tom and Kim, got word around that same time.

Later Wednesday morning, investigators released the names of the two victims to the public, and the day after that, Thursday, June 6th, the Cleveland Metroparks Detective Bureau and the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office held a joint press conference to announce more information in the case.

But officials' remarks were brief, and they didn't take any questions.

The only pertinent information that came out of the announcement was that Karnell had suffered multiple gunshot wounds to his head, and Kate had been shot once in the back of her head.

Both of their deaths were being considered homicides.

During the presser, the chief of the Cleveland Metroparks Police Department said that all the evidence detectives had gathered so far pointed to the murders being the result of an isolated incident and that no one should feel unsafe in the park.