Missing gay teen’s body found with gunshot wound to the head in possible hate crime

The body of a missing gay 19-year-old was found in Brooklyn last week with a gunshot wound to the head and “significant burn wounds.”

DeAndre Matthews, a student at SUNY Broome Community College studying criminal justice, reportedly went missing on February 6. According to his sister, Dajanae Gillespie, Matthews left his job at Buggy Service Center in Crown Heights, Brooklyn at around 5 p.m. that evening, returning home to borrow his mother’s Jeep. Danielle Mathews, the teen’s mother, was reportedly one of the last people to speak to him on the phone that night.

On Tuesday, Danielle Matthews was able to track the location of her Jeep using GPS. It was found burned out just minutes away from her Flatbush home. The family reported DeAndre missing that same day, and police later discovered his body on some train tracks in Midwood, Brooklyn.

In addition to the gunshot wound and burns, DeAndre also suffered from smoke inhalation, according to a medical examiner.

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DeAndre’s family are left baffled by the crime. “I want to know why [the killer] did it. What was the reason? DeAndre wasn’t a violent person. This wasn’t for retaliation. He wasn’t in the streets,” Gillespie told WNBC New York, adding that she thought her brother’s murder could have been a hate crime.

Police said on Friday that no arrests had been made and the investigation is ongoing.

“We don’t know anything and my sister, she don’t deserve this at all, at all,” DeAndre’s aunt, Tamika Matthews, told WCBS.

“I’m a hurt mother. I have my daughter but that was my son, that was my best friend. He made me a mother,” Danielle Matthews said. “Now, as a mother, I’m suffering. My daughter don’t have a big brother. My sister don’t have a nephew, my mother don’t have a grandson.”

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