In the early hours of June 25, 2023, 18-year-old Eliahs Emuel Brazoban was shot once in the neck outside the Rivington Food deli at Rivington and Pitt Streets on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. First responders found him with the fatal wound; he was taken to New York-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital and pronounced dead.

Brazoban lived in the Baruch Houses and had participated in Avenues for Justice, an East Village alternative-to-incarceration program, since July 2021. Family and advocates said he was working to turn his life around and had hopes of getting his driver’s permit, joining the Air Force, and pursuing a career in business or technology.

On September 22, 2023, police arrested 36-year-old Jonathan Morales, also a Baruch Houses resident, and charged him with murder; investigators had not immediately identified a motive. Did anyone who knew Eliahs or who was in the neighborhood that night see or hear anything that could help explain what happened?