Eighteen-year-old Serreno Foster Jr. needed Google Maps to find the place his Snapchat contact promised to meet him. It was Avondale’s Canyon Drive, long and curving, thickly lined with trees and homes. There was no way out but to turn around.
Foster didn’t make it that far.
Police found his body 12 hours later inside his still-running car on Canyon Drive. The lights were on. He’d been shot once and abandoned.
That was Dec. 12, 2020. No one has approached police with information about Foster’s death, one of the most callous killings investigators remember, in the nine months since.
“I’ve cried for almost every day,” said Foster’s father, Serreno Foster Sr., on Friday. “It’s hard. When I go home, I think of Serreno every day. Like, it’s hard to get this out of my mind. I can’t believe in a million years that something like this would happen to your son.”
Foster Jr. graduated from DePaul Cristo Rey High School with honors, a state basketball championship and boxfuls of scholarships. Xavier University offered him $100,000. Wittenburg extended a full ride.
He had hoped to study nursing and continue playing basketball in college.
Instead, his family hopes that someone who knows something about his death will come forward to give them closure on the short story of his life.
“I want to know why and who did this,” Foster Sr. said. “Somebody needs to — this needs to come to justice.”
Det. Brandon Fields of the Cincinnati Police Department is still working on the case despite months of silence. He feels for the family.
“It’s unfair to them that we’re at this point with no information,” he said.
