In the early morning hours of a Sunday in March 2017, a discovery was made in the 5300 block of State Street in East St. Louis that would forever alter the lives of two families. Police received a call about a vehicle that was stopped in the roadway. Inside, they found the bodies of 18-year-old Nathaniel Shuryn and 20-year-old Maurice L. Cotton. Both young men had been shot and were pronounced deceased at the scene.
The initial investigation revealed that two other individuals, a
17-year-old male and a 19-year-old male, had also sustained gunshot wounds inside the same vehicle but were expected to survive their injuries. A fifth person in the car, a 19-year-old female, was unharmed. The Illinois State Police were brought in to assist the East St. Louis Police Department with the double homicide investigation. At the time, authorities had not established a motive for the shooting and did not release any information about potential suspects.
As months turned into years, the case of Nathaniel Shuryn and Maurice L. Cotton grew cold. Despite initial efforts by law enforcement, no arrests were ever publicly announced, and no suspects were officially named in connection with the murders. The deaths of the two young men became part of the grim statistics of unsolved homicides in East St. Louis, a city grappling with a high rate of violent crime. The community and the families of the victims were left without answers, and the search for justice for Nathaniel and Maurice continues.
