Man who ran Detroit after hours club shot 11 times and killed

DETROIT (WJBK) - A life lost; a love lost. Kim and her fiancé - 42-year-old Raymond Whatley - were engaged to be married.

At 5:45 a.m. Saturday, outside an after-hours bar on Van Dyke, Whatley was ambushed and shot eleven times.

“Eleven times - who shoots someone eleven times? Were you that angry?" Kim wants to know. She showed up at the hospital, not knowing he’d been killed.

“They took me back to his room. My brother had been killed three years ago, so I already knew what the room meant. So, I wouldn’t go in the room.”

Relatives say Raymond and a friend ran the after-hours club, but that night there was an argument between Raymond and a relative of his business partner. As he was closing up and leaving in the morning, he was killed. 

“I don’t understand why, how an argument has to result in death. I mean, you took away a dad, a brother, a family member,” says Rose Paul, the victim’s sister.

Raymond was a father of nine children and a bouncer who loved to work out. He was a big guy they called a gentle giant.

“Whatever took place at that club, it didn’t warrant him to lose his life,” says Paul.

Now outside the club are melted candles, remnants of a vigil and the memory of a man gone for no good reason.

“We’re just asking for anybody that knows where they’re hiding out – we’re told the address where they live, they aren’t there any longer,” says Paul. “Somebody knows something.”

Although Raymond’s family has been told Detroit Police have some strong leads, the family is concerned that someone is helping the suspect hide out. If you have any information about the murder, call Detroit Police or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-SPEAK UP.