Michael Lamar Cousette was 20 when he was fatally shot in Philadelphia on September 22, 2017. The shooting happened around midnight on the 1700 block of West Cumberland Street; after being shot Cousette was taken by a private vehicle to Temple University Hospital, where he died.

A suspect, 29-year-old Michael Blackston of Nicetown, was arrested on November 2, 2019 and charged in Cousette’s killing along with possessing an instrument of a crime and several firearms violations. Authorities say Blackston was accused of membership in a violent drug trafficking organization responsible for multiple slayings in North and Northwest Philadelphia; prosecutors charged him in a total of five murders between 2011 and 2017, including Cousette’s. At the time of that arrest Blackston was already incarcerated and awaiting trial on an unrelated 2011 murder.

Cousette was expecting a son with his girlfriend Naadirah Fate; that son, Michael Lamar Cousette Jr., was born in February 2018. Cousette also had a daughter from a prior relationship. Does anyone have information about Cousette, his movements that night, or what happened on West Cumberland Street?