Who Was Malik Fennedy? Mystery Is Solved.

Several online commenters purporting to be Fennedy's family members left laments at the bottom of our original article ("...he is a Son a brother my lil cousin, he was warmth, a smile, and someones best friend. He was a still full of life he was so many things but most of all he is lost and I will miss him. it is sad that Halloween will never be the same! He was on his way to see his mother that night and now she will never see her son. may this crime not go unsolved.").

So, when it came to light several days later that the dead man was not Malik Fennedy but Malik Sohan, it created an uncomfortable situation. Were the grief-stricken relatives writing tributes to a man who was still laughing and joking as he walked around the city? Did Fennedy actually make it to his mother's house? And how did the Medical Examiner's misidentification occur? Stephen Gelman, the administrator for the Medical Examiner, got back to us today and answered many of our questions.

Malik Fennedy is not dead. But, then again, Malik Fennedy wasn't really alive, either.
 
Gelman told us that the identification on the scene of the crime was "Malik Fennedy" but family members later told the Medical Examiner that the young man's proper name was Malik Sohan.

Yet it turns out that "Fennedy was an alias" for Sohan. Gelman was unsure how, exactly, this misidentification was made, but what he did tell us answers our two biggest questions: There is not a Malik Fennedy reading about his own death; and the relatives of the dead man are mourning the right person.