On the evening of February 22, 2015, 27-year-old Shakim Rivera was found unconscious on Bayview Place near Remsen Avenue in the Canarsie neighborhood of Brooklyn with a gunshot wound to the head. He was taken to Brookdale Hospital and pronounced dead on arrival.

Rivera was described as the leader of the Cypress Gangsta Crips, a subset of the Eight Trey Crips based in the Cypress Hills Houses of East New York. His killing followed an internal gang dispute: Demetrius Duke Graham, another high-ranking member, had been killed on February 19, 2015, and members of Rivera’s group believed Rivera was responsible. According to accounts, a man named Jason Soto, known as Twin, traveled from Pennsylvania to Brooklyn, lured Rivera to the Canarsie location, and, along with another alleged gang member, shot Rivera in the back of the head.

Officially the case remained unsolved for years, though investigators treated the slaying as gang-related. In March 2018, during an unrelated federal sentencing, a judge found prosecutors had presented clear and convincing evidence that Jason Soto was responsible for Rivera’s murder. Did anyone in the neighborhood see Rivera that night or recognize the man called Twin?