Roanoke police charge man in 2005 murder of teen Calvin Mack

More than two decades after Calvin DeWayne Mack was found shot in a Roanoke yard, police have put a name on the case that sat dormant for years. Roanoke authorities charged Demetrius Ronell Cooper in Mack’s 2005 murder after a cold-case review produced enough new evidence to send the file back through prosecutors and a grand jury.

Officers first responded on December 30, 2005, to the 2400 block of Staunton Avenue NW after a report of a person down. They found 18-year-old Mack in a yard with gunshot wounds and pronounced him dead at the scene. For years after that, the homicide went inactive when extensive efforts failed to produce a live lead.

That changed when investigators reopened the case on March 14, 2024 and assigned it to the Roanoke Police Cold Case Unit. Over roughly 18 months, detectives developed new information before presenting the case to the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office. A grand jury then returned a true bill of indictment, the legal step that moved the investigation from a long-stalled file into active criminal court.

Cooper was formally charged on April 10, 2026 with first-degree murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. Police said he was already incarcerated in a Virginia state prison on unrelated charges when the indictment came down, a detail that underscores how cold-case work can still move even when a suspect is already behind bars.

Mack’s obituary lists him as 18 and of Roanoke, and says he died on Friday, December 30, 2005. It identifies his mother as Dorothy M. Mack and his father as Richard Murphy Jr., along with grandparents, siblings and other family members who have carried the case since the night he was killed.

The shift from inactive file to indictment also fits how Roanoke says it handles older cases. The department’s Criminal Investigations Unit reviews solvability factors when deciding how to follow up, and the city says past offenses can be reported through its online police reporting system. In a city where circuit-court criminal records remain local and records requests are part of the process, Mack’s killing is now headed into the public court record after 20 years of waiting.