Durham police ask for help on anniversary of Dwight Grayer’s death

Dwight “DJ” Dewayne Grayer was visiting friends in Durham in early January of last year when he decided to spend an extra day before returning home to Fayetteville so he could visit an Apple store because his new iPhone needed repairs.

The following evening, on Jan. 4, police found Grayer, 20, inside his burgundy Chevrolet Impala with a gunshot wound to his head. Grayer, a former N.C. Central University student who was studying pharmaceutical sciences at Fayetteville Technical Community College, fought for his life for nearly nine months before doctors at Duke University Medical Center declared him brain dead during surgery. His parents unplugged him from life support on Sept. 17.

Durham’s CrimeStoppers program this week posted a $2,000 reward that police hope will pry loose information about who killed Grayer, the youngest of four children of Army veteran parents.

Grayer, who hoped to become a pharmacist, graduated from Pine Forest High School in Fayetteville in 2012. He loved playing recreational football and basketball. His father, Dwight Grayer Sr., who retired after a 22-year career in the Army, often coached his teams.

“He played quarterback,” his mother, Annette Grayer, said Friday. “He was always captain of the football team. He was a leader.”

Annette Grayer described her son as a smart young man who was accepted into the pharmacy program at NCCU but was a “typical” first-year college student who “didn’t want to buckle down” and opted to return home after his freshman year.

Annette Grayer said her son was a fun-loving person, always the life of the party at family gatherings. He also had a heart for others and would try to befriend the person no one else wanted to befriend.

“There was a little girl in his class with Down’s syndrome,” she said. “He loved that little girl. From elementary school until they graduated from high school, he was friends with that girl.”

The day before leaving his Fayetteville home for Durham, Grayer went into his mother’s bedroom. “He gave me a kiss and said, ‘I’ll be back soon,’” she said.

Police say that on the night he was shot Grayer had stopped his car at a traffic light at Horton Road and North Duke Street. A gray Hyundai Elantra that had been parked in a lot near the intersection pulled into the street alongside Grayer’s car on its driver side, and the passenger in the Hyundai fired several shots, police said. The Hyundai turned north onto North Duke Street and fled.

Since then, police have been unable to unearth anything to lead them to the suspects. They were told that a black man drove the Hyundai and that the shooter in the front passenger seat was black, too. They have not released any other description.

A passenger in Grayer’s car escaped injury. But Grayer was hit once in the head, leaving him paralyzed on his left side. He lost an eye, and his sinuses were shattered. The gunshot so damaged his skullcap that he had to wear a helmet.

“When he first got shot, the doctors didn’t think he would make it through the night,” Annette Grayer said. “He defied the odds. He baffled the doctors. He fought and fought.”

Dwight Grayer was unable to talk again until March, but by the third day after the shooting, he communicated with his parents and doctors by squeezing their hands.

“He let us know he heard us,” his mother said. “The doctors were amazed.”

Dwight Grayer left Duke Hospital in March. He continued therapy at Cape Fear Valley Rehabilitation Center until June, when his parents took him to Burlington, where he was fitted with a prosthetic eye. His mother took a leave of absence from work to take care of her youngest child, who still had to be fed through a feeding tube.

Grayer died of a massive stroke during surgery at Duke Hospital, where doctors had made a prosthetic skullcap to cover his brain.

Detectives investigating Grayer’s death told his parents the area where he died has been beset by gang violence. His mother decried the gun violence that took her son’s life and the lives of so many young people in recent years.

“We’re not the only parents who have gone through this,” she said. “Pray for us all.”

Police want to get new leads so they can move on the case, they said this week as the anniversary of Grayer’s death approached. They ask anyone with information to call Cpl. M.E. Richards at 919-560-4440, ext. 29320, or CrimeStoppers at 919-683-1200.

This story was originally published September 16, 2016 at 11:41 AM with the headline "Durham police ask for help on anniversary of Dwight Grayer’s death."