N.Y.P.D.
This security-camera still taken moments before the murder of Brandon Woodard shows Mr. Woodard in the foreground and the gunman walking up behind him and pulling a gun from his jacket pocket.
A single bullet. A nickel-plated gun. Two suspects, lying in wait in the light drizzle of a Monday afternoon in Midtown, stalking their victim for nearly 30 minutes.
The target came down West 58th Street, toward Broadway, his eyes focused on a smartphone in that familiar modern pose. He appeared for a second to glimpse his hooded assailant, the police said, but, not recognizing him, turned around again.
The hooded gunman then fired a bullet into the back of the victim's head and, without apparent urgency or panic, stepped into a waiting car to blend into the midday traffic near Columbus Circle.
It seemed like a movie-script murder out of Hollywood, a mysterious targeted killing of a law school student visiting from Los Angeles that left detectives on two coasts scouring for evidence and a logical motive. On Tuesday, a better picture of the victim, Brandon Lincoln Woodard, began to emerge along with details about his final hours, deepening the intrigue over his murder.
The gun had been used before, in a 2009 shooting in Queens. Mr. Woodard had flown to New York only Sunday, with plans to return to the West Coast the next day.
"He had a law school exam," said Christiane Roussell, a lawyer in Los Angeles who grew up with Mr. Woodard in Ladera Heights. The police said he had no return ticket.
Mr. Woodard, 31, was the scion of a successful family in California. His life had been a blend of achievement and puzzling setbacks that included at least 20 arrests, mostly in California, the police said.
His relatives were entrepreneurs, lawyers and trailblazers; his grandfather, Leonard Woods, was a celebrated drag racer. His mother, Sandra Wellington, ran a once-successful mortgage business, and sent him to private Episcopal schools in Los Angeles and North Hollywood.
This summer, California authorities revoked her company's license to lend or service mortgages, citing violations of the state financial code.
Mr. Woodard was a promising student who played varsity basketball in high school at Campbell Hall, and always dressed impeccably, his relatives and friends said. At the time, he was in the local chapter of Jack and Jill of America — a national, invitation-only society of middle- and upper-class black families. Those years, friends said, children from the club could be found poolside at parties at his family's home.
That background, and his gregarious nature, made him a fixture on the party and club scene in Los Angeles, his friends said. He drove a Range Rover in college at Loyola Marymount University, but, as one friend said, "his personality was his bling." This month, he had his eye on a Mercedes CL 6.3 AMG that he hoped to buy, a cousin said.
As a partyer and promoter, Mr. Woodard made himself a part of a world of expensive alcohol and private tables where, friends said, people with elite pedigrees rubbed elbows with stars and professional athletes — as well as with a rougher crowd.
Several friends in Los Angeles said that in recent years he had been sliding into the darker side of club life.
"I know him as a good person," said Dennis Christopher White, 32, a friend of Mr. Woodard's for about 10 years, who met him playing basketball in Los Angeles. "He's like a brother or a cousin to me. He's very humble."
But as Mr. White married and pursued a career in government work, he saw less of Mr. Woodard, who continued his busy presence in the city's night-life scene.
"You never know who he meets," Mr. White said. "I didn't get a chance to know that part of him."
Mr. Woodard's mother, Ms. Wellington, 56, said she believed that all of his arrests came when he was a juvenile, but court records clearly indicated that he had more recent arrests and misdemeanor convictions.
Reporting was contributed by Jack Begg, Sheelagh McNeill and William K. Rashbaum in New York and Noah Gilbert in Los Angeles.Reporting was contributed by Jack Begg, Sheelagh McNeill and William K. Rashbaum in New York and Noah Gilbert in Los Angeles.
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