On December 6, 2014, 24-year-old Jaree Robert Warren, Sr. was fatally shot in a parking lot near West 18th and Raspberry streets in Erie, Pennsylvania, after having been inside the nearby Last Stop Cafe. He was taken to UPMC Hamot and died of his injuries.

Investigators tied the killing to Julian R. Mickel. Prosecutors said Mickel had lain in wait in the parking lot and that the slaying followed an altercation about two weeks earlier in which Mickel had also fired shots at Warren. Witness testimony at trial conflicted: one witness who initially could not identify the shooter later named Mickel, and another witness said Warren pushed a man away and tried to flee before being shot, identifying the shooter as Mickel, known as Juice. The defense produced witnesses who described a shooter who did not match Mickel’s appearance.

Mickel was tried twice in 2017 with both trials ending in hung juries. As a third trial was about to begin in September 2017, Mickel, then 27 and already serving a sentence from the earlier shooting incident, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and received a nine- to 18-year prison term; at the plea hearing he admitted he had pulled the trigger.

Did anyone who knew Jaree or saw him in that area in December 2014 notice anything unusual that night?