A Rochester man has been arrested in connection with the 2022 killing of 29-year-old James Hallenbeck.
Rahjule Keeton, 21, is charged with second-degree murder in the commission of another felony, first-degree robbery with a deadly weapon, and second-degree robbery aided by another. Rochester police believe another person was involved in the killing and has yet to be arrested.
A grand jury indicted Keaton last week. He was arrested Monday during a traffic stop and is currently being held in Monroe County Jail.
Hallenbeck was killed in the early morning hours of Aug. 21, 2022, while taking a walk on Olean Street, near his South Plymouth Avenue home. The walk was part of his regular routine. He typically wore headphones, and on that night was drinking a can of Genesee beer.
Keeton is accused of robbing Hallenbeck and then firing a single shot into his chest. Hallenbeck died in a grassy verge about half a mile from his house.
Hallenbeck’s slaying was one in a WXXI series on cold case homicides from 2023.
For Hallenbeck’s mother, Carol, the arrest is a small bit of relief but doesn’t necessarily bring closure.
“I’m grateful for the RPD Major Crimes investigative team responsible for tenaciously building this case from precious little evidence over the past three years and almost three months, finally putting this man behind bars and beginning the service of justice for our son's murder,” Hallenbeck said during a news conference at the Public Safety Building, announcing the arrest.
Hallenbeck also urged state lawmakers to make amendments to the Bail Elimination Act of 2019. She said she thought Keeton should have already been in jail. Keeton had been arrested back in March in connection with a burglary at Van Bortle Ford in Perinton.
Hallenbeck’s case was unusual among the 75 city homicides that year, in that it was truly random. Hallenbeck, a metal musician and fermenting and marketing manager at nearby Small World Foods, had no connection to Keeton. He was not involved in any criminal activity and did not have any kind of altercation that led to the shooting, police said.
“It’s not like we had a lot to go with,” said RPD Detective Matt Klein. “No witnesses that night, we just had to work the best we can with what we had.”
A credit card stolen from Hallenbeck was used by a group of people on the Tonawanda reservation in Genesee County. None of the four were determined to have any connection with the shooting.
Klein and Detective Mario Correia spent the past three years reviewing hundreds of hours of video taken near the scene. It was determined the vehicle the suspects left in matched a car that was stolen in July 2022 from St. Clair Street. The gun that killed Hallenbeck was picked up during a separate investigation and is linked to a number of other violent crimes in the city.
A big piece of the puzzle, Klein said, was a Wi-Fi ping from the nearby Phyllis Wheatley Community Library at the time of the shooting. Another officer, Chris Shingleton, assisted in figuring out what social media and other accounts had accessed that Wi-Fi at the time of the shooting.
“A lot of our homicides are people that have some social media confrontation, or confrontation over another loved ones, or some kind of inter-battle between factions ... we seem to have a lot of those homicides,” Correia said. “When you have someone who lives in the neighborhood, is listening to his music, going for a walk, enjoying a beverage, and all of a sudden is assaulted and shot dead, that’s one where you think where is our society today?
“It’s senseless,” he continued. “It didn’t have to happen.”
