George Cortez, 36, was found with multiple gunshot wounds to the chest on the 2300 block of Cleveland Street in North Philadelphia on June 27, 2016. He was taken to Temple University Hospital and pronounced dead that morning. Two months earlier, Cortez had been released from prison after serving four years for a murder he did not commit; his brother, Owen Cortez, was later identified as the actual killer in the 2011 death of Nafis Murray, and George was exonerated and freed on April 22, 2016.

Philadelphia police investigated a possible retaliatory motive, with detectives and Cortez’s mother, Rosetta, voicing concern that friends of Nafis Murray might have targeted him in a misplaced quest for vengeance. Initial reports listed no suspects, and the case went cold with no publicly announced arrests in the years that followed.

If anyone in the neighborhood from that time has information about what happened on Cleveland Street in the early hours of June 27, 2016, please come forward.