Category: Philadelphia News

Fatima Jones had already buried two of her sons when she sat in a courtroom and heard prosecutors accuse a third son of killing them.

Amir Jones, 33, was among several men who opened fire when a brawl broke out at a West Philadelphia block party on July 21, 2024, prosecutors said. They charged him with murder in the deaths of his brothers, Akil, 33, and Rashie, 29, and a friend, Sekayi Robinson, 23, and with aggravated assault and other crimes for wounding four others on North Alden Street.

Last week, that case fell apart.

On the morning Jones’ trial was set to begin, prosecutors dropped the murder and aggravated assault charges, saying he had acted in defense of his brothers. And by the end of the trial, a judge had acquitted him of everything else.

The reversal lets Fatima Jones finally grieve alongside her surviving son, she said in an interview. But it leaves open a question authorities have been unable to answer: If Amir Jones didn’t kill his brothers, who did?

When Jones was arrested, his mother said, ”I felt like I lost three sons. Amir was alive, but incarcerated and accused of killing his two brothers — something I knew he would never do.”

Now, she said, “I want the men who killed my sons held accountable. Like, where are they at?”

The only person convicted in the shooting is Jones’ codefendant, Tahir Shoatz, 30. Before she acquitted Jones, Common Pleas Court Judge Roxanne Covington found Shoatz guilty of third-degree murder in Robinson’s death, along with attempted murder and other offenses, but acquitted him of killing the Jones brothers.

Chaos on a crowded block

The shooting turned the block party into a sprawling, chaotic crime scene, video footage played at the trial showed.

Officers who arrived five minutes after the first gunshot found wounded victims scattered across the block, people shouting, and cars still passing down the road.

They found Akil Jones dead in the street, his torso pierced by a bullet.

Seconds later, after a woman screamed, “He’s not dead!” officers discovered Rashie Jones bleeding and crawling in an alleyway, a 9mm handgun in his hand. Shot once in the torso, at close range, he was pronounced dead soon after at a hospital.

Inside a North Alden Street house, officers followed a trail of blood to Shoatz, who had been shot in the abdomen, right shoulder, and right knee. Four other victims — a 26-year-old woman and three men ages 26 to 29 — were also shot, but survived.

Neither Jones, who was struck by two bullets on his left side, nor Robinson, who had been shot in his leg and chest, was at the scene when officers arrived. Both had already been taken to a hospital, where Robinson later died.

Surveillance video captured how the shooting began, Assistant District Attorney Cydney Pope said at trial. Shoatz reached for a gun during an argument with Akil Jones, and the two wrestled over it, tumbling to the ground.

Amir Jones jumped in, Pope said, and came out of the scrum holding a gun.

Gunfire came from several directions, from at least six shooters, including Jones and Shoatz, firearms experts testified. Some, however, have not been identified.

One gunman, taking cover behind a van across the street, fired repeatedly toward the men on the ground. As the judge delivered her verdict last week, she said it was clear that this gunman killed Akil Jones. Covington also found that one of the other shooters — not Jones or Shoatz — killed Rashie Jones.

It was the verdict Loretta Jones, grandmother to all three brothers, said she had prayed for.

As she sat in the courtroom awaiting it, she said, she made one request: “I said, ‘God, don’t nobody know the story but you. You was the only one there to see the whole thing. So please, let the judge see the same thing you saw and let my grandson go.’ And God made the judge see what He saw: that Amir had nothing to do with it.”

Attempts to reach Jones were unsuccessful.

What the videos showed

Prosecutors built their case largely on videos. But the footage could not answer everything, and little else could fill the gaps.

Police recovered 41 casings and bullet fragments and three guns, but none of the weapons could be linked to the killings.

More than 100 people were at the party, and some may have disturbed evidence before police secured the scene, Pope acknowledged at trial. None of the partygoers — including the four other people who were shot — testified as witnesses.

“We always knew there were people we could identify, and people we couldn’t,” Pope said in an interview. The shooter who fired from behind the van, “never gets close enough to the camera for us to be able to identify him,” she said.

Jones’ attorney, David Nenner, raised the issue of the unidentified gunmen from the start, asking a judge to dismiss the case at a preliminary hearing — a request the judge rejected.

Pope contended that Jones was responsible even if he didn’t fire the fatal shots.

“This is a tragedy, there’s no question,” she said at the time. “But … the number of people who were ultimately killed would not have been what it was had it not been for the conduct of the defendant.”

Pope said the decision to drop the murder and aggravated assault charges against Jones last week followed a “very intensive review of the videos” and a firearms examiner’s findings. Jones was “acting in defense of others,” she said, until after his brothers were hit.

After that, cameras showed Jones firing several shots up North Alden Street, which Pope said she believes were aimed at Shoatz. Because of that, she said, prosecutors did not dismiss reckless endangerment and other charges against Jones.

‘An incredibly sad’ case

Nenner, Jones’ lawyer, called the case “an incredibly sad situation” and said Jones had struggled with the weight of being accused of killing his brothers. Jones spent 14 months behind bars after he was arrested by U.S. marshals in July 2025, nearly a year after the shooting.

Before acquitting Jones, Covington told him, “I am very sorry for your loss.” She said she believed he had acted to defend his brothers, and more than a dozen relatives applauded.

Jones wiped tears away with a tissue. Then, as soon as he could, he rose from the defense table and walked quickly toward a holding cell, never turning to face his family.

Amir, his mother said, was “always the quiet one.”

Akil Jones had an entrepreneurial streak and owned a West Philadelphia daycare, his family said. Rashie was a free spirit who loved to rap, his mother said.

Robinson owned a West Philadelphia water ice and ice cream shop and had played basketball in high school and college. He would do anything for anyone, his father, Vernon Robinson, said.

“He was the glue to this family,” he said.

Although Shoatz was convicted of Robinson’s murder, Robinson’s father said he doesn’t believe Shoatz fired the shot that killed his son. Citing the video evidence and the angle of the wound, he said he believed Shoatz hit his son in the leg and another gunman shot him in the chest.

Like Fatima Jones, Vernon Robinson said he wants prosecutors to keep pursuing the other shooters.

“I want my son back. But I need answers,” he said. “And I want justice.”

Pope said investigators are still working to identify the other gunmen, and she urged anyone with information to contact police or prosecutors. The police department’s homicide unit can be reached at 215-686-3334 or 215-686-3335, and tips can be submitted anonymously to 215-686-TIPS.

“We don’t believe that any case is closed until all suspects are identified,” she said.