On August 13, 2017, 24-year-old Cierra Jackson was found dead inside her home on the 1700 block of O’Fallon Street in St. Louis, Missouri, having sustained a fatal gunshot wound to the torso. Investigators determined the shots were fired from outside through the bedroom window. The shooting was treated as a domestic incident rather than random violence.

Police focused on Jackson’s 24-year-old ex-boyfriend, Victor Whittier, after learning she had sought a restraining order and reported threatening text messages from him. Jackson’s eleven-year-old brother, in another room playing video games, told investigators he heard Whittier’s voice yelling an obscenity just before the gunshots. Whittier was arrested on August 15, 2017, charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action, and held without bail.

Prosecutors presented the history of harassment and the brother’s testimony at trial. In September 2018 a jury found Victor Whittier guilty of first-degree murder and armed criminal action. The brother read a victim impact statement at the November 2018 sentencing hearing describing the loss of his sister, who had been raising him. Did anyone in the neighborhood see or hear anything else that night?