Desmond Burks was sentenced after pleading guilty in the 2023 killing of Dr. Devon Hoover and a 2024 road-rage death.

DETROIT, Mich. — A Michigan man who pleaded guilty in the killing of a prominent neurosurgeon and in a separate road-rage death was sentenced Feb. 20 to decades in prison, closing one of the city’s most closely watched homicide cases while leaving families to describe the damage in court.

Judge Paul Cusick sentenced Desmond Burks, 35, to 35 to 60 years in prison in the death of Dr. Devon Hoover, plus a five-year consecutive term on a weapons count, after prosecutors said the case took more than a year to build and stretched across five states and three countries. Burks also received 10 to 15 years for manslaughter in the death of Reda Saleh, 67, in a 2024 Detroit road-rage confrontation, with that term ordered to run at the same time as the Hoover sentence. The hearing mattered because it tied together two separate killings and marked the end of the criminal cases without a trial.

Burks entered his plea Jan. 21, 2026, during jury selection in the Hoover case, after prosecutors had charged him with first-degree premeditated murder, felony murder, larceny, computer-related fraud and gun crimes. In exchange, the first-degree murder count was dismissed, but the sentencing agreement called for decades in prison. At Friday’s hearing in Wayne County Circuit Court, Burks showed little remorse. He smiled, waved toward cameras and, according to local courtroom coverage, interrupted the solemn mood with a defiant statement before the sentence was imposed. “I’m not a murderer. I’m not a killer. I’m just a regular person,” Burks said as he tried to distance himself from the crimes even after pleading guilty. Cusick cut through that claim in blunt terms, telling him, “Quite frankly, you are a murderer, sir.” The exchange gave the hearing its sharpest moment and underscored how far Burks remained from the grief being described around him.

Prosecutors said Hoover, 53, was killed in April 2023 inside his mansion on W. Boston Boulevard in Detroit’s Boston-Edison neighborhood, a historic district known for large homes and high-profile residents. The case first surfaced when police responded April 22, 2023, to a parking complaint on Coyle Street and found Hoover’s white Range Rover blocking a driveway with what appeared to be blood inside. Officers traced the vehicle to Hoover’s home and went there that same evening, finding the rear gate open but getting no answer at the doors. The next day, after Hoover’s relatives asked police for a welfare check because he had failed to travel to Indiana to see his dying mother, officers returned and found blood near the rear entrance. Inside the home, they discovered Hoover’s body in an attic crawl space, face down, wrapped in a blood-soaked carpet and wearing only socks. An autopsy later found he had been shot twice in the back of the head. Hoover’s phone, wallet, financial cards and expensive watches were missing, and prosecutors said fraudulent transactions began almost immediately after the killing.

The evidence against Burks was broad and heavily digital, prosecutors said. Investigators traced about 4,000 communications between Hoover and a phone number tied to Burks, and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said those messages showed the two men were in an intimate relationship and that Burks at times charged Hoover for sexual services. Prosecutors also said phone records, geolocation data, video footage and other records placed Hoover’s phone and Burks in the same locations on the day of the killing. Surveillance video showed a man investigators identified as Burks parking Hoover’s Range Rover near the 9900 block of Coyle Street, then limping away with a backpack. Authorities said Burks’ fingerprint was found inside the SUV, and they noted he was known to walk with a limp after a prior gunshot wound to the hip. Worthy said the inquiry became harder because some witnesses were reluctant to discuss sensitive personal details. Still, she said investigators recovered and analyzed volumes of records, including several terabytes of digital material, before bringing the case to court. Burks was initially detained as a person of interest in May 2023 but was released after prosecutorial review, a step that drew attention because charges would not come until much later.

Hoover’s killing had already drawn intense attention because of who he was and how he lived. He was a respected Detroit neurosurgeon affiliated with Ascension, and his death shook both the medical community and his neighborhood. His home, a stately mansion he bought in 2008, had become known locally for gatherings, including an annual Christmas party that neighbors and friends remembered as a tradition. An obituary described Hoover as someone who treated the residence almost like a museum and took pride in sharing it with visitors. That setting made the violence all the more jarring. In court, Hoover’s relatives described not only his loss but the cruel timing around it. One of his sisters said the family was trying to reach him because he had not made it to Indiana to see their mother, who was dying. Four days after Hoover was killed, she died. Relatives told the court they had to absorb the horror of his murder while preparing to bury their mother the same week. Their statements turned the sentencing from a legal event into an account of a family broken in two at nearly the same moment.

The second case added another layer to the hearing because it showed Burks was accused of another deadly act less than a year after Hoover’s death. Prosecutors said that on April 17, 2024, at about 6:45 p.m., Detroit police were called to West Chicago Street and Greenfield Road, where Saleh had been found unconscious with head trauma after a confrontation on the road. Investigators said Saleh, a Dearborn man, had bumped the rear of Burks’ vehicle. The two drivers got out, argued and Burks punched him, leaving him in the street before driving off. Saleh was taken to a hospital and died May 11, 2024. Burks had originally faced a second-degree murder charge in that case, but he later pleaded guilty to manslaughter under the same broader resolution that ended the Hoover prosecution. The concurrent 10- to 15-year term meant the Saleh case did not add years beyond the longer Hoover sentence, though it broadened the record before the judge. Defense attorney Gabi Silver apologized to the families, but there was no sign Burks would fully accept responsibility for either death.

Family members from both cases filled the courtroom with grief and restraint. Hoover’s sisters spoke about losing a brother they described as brilliant, driven and deeply loved, while Saleh’s relatives described a gentle, religious family man who had cared for his disabled wife and anchored a large household. Saleh’s stepdaughter told the court the loss had spread through every part of their lives. Yet courtroom reports said several relatives also spoke in a tone of compassion rather than rage, a contrast the judge pointed out as he watched Burks smirk, roll his eyes and pick at his cuticles during victim statements. Cusick praised the families’ grace and called their words profound. Their composure stood in tension with Burks’ own remarks, which included an apology for what happened to Saleh but not a full acknowledgment of guilt. He said the road-rage encounter was “a slap, not an assault,” and maintained that taking the plea in Hoover’s case did not mean he committed that killing. By the end of the hearing, though, the legal question was settled. The plea had spared the families a lengthy trial, but not the public retelling of how both men died.

With the sentence imposed, Burks enters the Michigan prison system under terms that require him to serve the 35- to 60-year Hoover sentence and the consecutive five-year weapons term, while the manslaughter sentence in Saleh’s death runs concurrently. The cases now stand closed in court, with the sentence from Feb. 20, 2026, marking the next major date in a saga that began with Hoover’s disappearance in April 2023.