Killing of Rashawn Brazell

Rashawn Brazell, 19, disappeared on the morning of February 14, 2005, after leaving his home in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, to meet his accountant and later have lunch with his mother in Manhattan. At around 7:30 a.m., an unknown person rang his apartment building's security buzzer, and Brazell went downstairs to meet him. Witnesses reported that Brazell met a man outside his apartment, and the two entered the subway together at the Gates Avenue station, apparently exiting a short time later at the Nostrand Avenue station in Bedford–Stuyvesant. Brazell was never seen alive again.

On February 17, 2005, transit workers discovered a male torso, legs, and one arm inside double-bagged blue and black trash bags in an A line subway tunnel between the Nostrand Avenue and Franklin Avenue stations. The remains had been left between the southbound tracks and the tunnel wall, near an emergency exit stairway. Nearby, investigators found a black and beige "Rooster" tool bag containing tools stained with the victim's blood; the bag was one of only 15 prototypes ever made and had been sold exclusively to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in 2001. This detail, combined with the location of the remains inside the tunnel, led police to believe the person responsible had significant familiarity with the subway system. Fingerprint analysis positively identified the remains as Brazell's. On February 23 and 24, 2005, an arm and hand also identified as belonging to Brazell were recovered from double-bagged trash bags at a recycling plant on Humboldt Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Brazell's head has never been found.

The New York City Police Department conducted a nationwide search for clues, and the case was profiled multiple times on the television program America's Most Wanted. The case remained unsolved for over a decade.

A break came in 2017, when police arrested Kwauhuru Govan, who was Brazell's cousin and former neighbor and who had a criminal history predating 2005. Govan had since relocated to Florida, where he was imprisoned in 2014 following an armed robbery conviction. He was charged with Brazell's murder. Separately, DNA evidence linked Govan to another unsolved Brooklyn homicide, the killing of Sharabia Thomas, and he was extradited to New York to face that charge as well. Govan was convicted of Thomas's murder in 2018. According to detectives, when questioned about the Brazell case, Govan made statements they characterized as false and evasive; investigators cited this conduct along with other evidence in charging him with Brazell's killing, and they have said they suspect he could be responsible for additional unsolved homicides.