A long-running personal feud in Camden’s Cramer Hill neighborhood ended in fatal violence on the evening of April 3, 2014. Ernesto Pete Torres Jr., 22, was confronted on the 2700 block of Wayne Avenue by 23-year-old Jonathan Cruz in a dispute that reportedly involved two women with whom Cruz had children. Cruz allegedly approached Torres, pointed a gun at his head, and opened fire as Torres tried to run. Torres was struck multiple times, collapsed on the steps of a home on Lincoln Avenue, and was later pronounced dead at the scene.

A warrant for Cruz’s arrest was issued May 24, 2014, after he fled the Camden area. On June 2, a U.S. Marshals task force arrested him in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where he had been staying with a relative; he was extradited to New Jersey to face murder charges and was held on $1 million bail. Torres’s family remembered him as a loving young man who had been a cheerleader at Camden Academy Charter High School and loved basketball.

If anyone has information about the rivalry or the events that led to Torres’s death, please share what is known.