A Friday Night in Algiers: The Unanswered Killing of Tollette “Tonka” George

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A Young Life Remembered Beyond the Crime

Tollette “Tonka” George Jr. was 23 years old when he was killed in New Orleans on June 24, 2016. Public case records identify him as a Black man born on March 14, 1993, and describe his death as a homicide caused by gunfire. Yet the available record of George’s life makes clear that his story did not begin at the intersection where it ended. He had been a prominent football player, first at Edna Karr High School in New Orleans and later at Alcorn State University in Mississippi. Years after his death, organizations dedicated to unresolved homicides continue to maintain a case page in his name, while New Orleans-area reporting and community remembrance have continued to revisit the killing. As of 2026, a decade after George died, the homicide remains unsolved.

The Football Standout Known as “Tonka”

George was widely known by the nickname “Tonka,” and football was a major part of his public identity. Contemporary reporting described him as a former Edna Karr football standout, while later accounts have remembered him as a star quarterback at the New Orleans high school. His athletic career continued at Alcorn State University, where he played college football; reports concerning his death also identified him as a former Alcorn State receiver. Those connections meant that news of his death extended beyond his Algiers neighborhood. He was remembered not merely as the victim named in a police investigation, but as a former student-athlete whose life had intersected with school communities in both Louisiana and Mississippi.

The Night of June 24, 2016

George was killed late on Friday, June 24, 2016, in Algiers, on the west bank of New Orleans. According to the information published by Crimestoppers Greater New Orleans, police responded shortly before 10 p.m. The New Orleans Police Department had received a report involving gunfire and officers arrived near the intersection of Lauradale Drive and Vespasian Street. There, they encountered a man lying motionless on the ground. The victim was Tollette George. What had been an ordinary Friday night had become the scene of a homicide investigation.

The Intersection Where George Was Found

The location of the killing has remained an important element of later coverage. George was found near Lauradale Drive and Vespasian Street in Algiers. A report published around the tenth anniversary of the case noted that the corner was close to the home where George lived, giving the geography of the homicide an especially painful dimension. His death did not occur in some distant part of the city disconnected from his everyday life; according to that reporting, it happened near his own neighborhood and close to home. The same intersection continues to be repeated in case summaries because it represents one of the few firmly established public facts about the circumstances of his death.

Multiple Gunshot Wounds and a Death at the Scene

When officers reached George, he had suffered multiple gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Publicly available case descriptions do not provide a detailed reconstruction of the shooting itself: they establish where George was found, that he had been shot more than once, and that he died there. Project Cold Case likewise records his cause of death as firearm-related and identifies the case as a homicide. The limited nature of the publicly available account is significant. Despite the passage of years, descriptions of the case repeatedly return to the same small set of known facts rather than presenting a publicly established sequence explaining who approached George, why he was targeted, or precisely what happened immediately before the gunfire.

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