Baltimore County Police are renewing their public appeal for information in the 1997 murder of Donniel Rheubottom, a 36-year-old Catonsville resident and National Guard veteran who was shot and killed steps from his own home outside a bar on Winters Lane. Nearly three decades later, detectives say the case remains unsolved, with no surveillance footage and no physical evidence ever linking a suspect to the killing.
According to the Baltimore County Police Department’s Homicide Cold Case Squad, officers responded to reports of gunfire outside Kings Palace at 180 Winters Lane in Catonsville at approximately 10:54 p.m. on Sept. 30, 1997, and found Rheubottom lying in the roadway. As reported by WMAR 2 News, a man approached Rheubottom and asked him for a cigarette, then reached for Rheubottom’s gun as Rheubottom went to retrieve one. Witnesses heard a single gunshot and ran into the bar to call 911 for help.
County records list Rheubottom’s official cause of death as a fatal gunshot wound to the upper body, within the jurisdiction of Precinct 1 Wilkens, according to Baltimore County Government unsolved homicide records. Police described the suspect as a Black male who approached Rheubottom on the curb before drawing a handgun, demanding money, shooting him, and fleeing on foot. Witnesses who gave detectives details about the shooting did not recognize the man, the station’s report notes.
A Veteran Remembered by His Church and Family
Rheubottom had served in both the infantry and a medical unit of the National Guard, earning an honorable discharge after serving in the Persian Gulf War, per the same cold case records. He left behind a wife, a son, and a close-knit church community where he played bass guitar in the choir, the station’s report states…