Just before dawn on May 9, 2022, a Peoria police officer was flagged down by a resident about a man lying in an alley off East Behrends Avenue near North Maryland Avenue in the East Bluff neighborhood of Peoria.
Officers found a 31-year-old African American male with obvious signs of trauma and began life-saving efforts, but he was pronounced dead at the scene. The man was soon identified as Michael Anthony Jones Jr, a 31-year-old from West Peoria.
In the hours that followed, the coroner's office conducted an autopsy and determined that the 31-year-old African American male suffered a single gunshot wound to the upper body and that the manner of death was homicide.
The finding confirmed what the scene had already suggested: someone had taken the life of Michael Anthony Jones Jr, a 31-year-old male, in the quiet half-light of a Monday morning.
Detectives opened a homicide investigation and asked the public for information as they canvassed the neighborhood around East Behrends and North Maryland.
The early statements from authorities did not include suspect details, and the department's releases framed the case as an active, ongoing effort to learn who pulled the trigger and why.
Across memorial pages and local case summaries, the portrait that emerges is of Michael Anthony Jones Jr, a 31-year-old African American male whose name now sits among Peoria's 2022 gun-homicide victims.
These public records and memorial listings trace the same outline: the time, the alley, the fatal shot, and the unanswered questions that followed.
As of the latest publicly available information, authorities have not announced an arrest or identified a suspect in the killing of 31-year-old Michael Anthony Jones Jr.
Neither the police releases nor subsequent local reporting reviewed show a named suspect or charges tied to this case, and appeals for tips remain part of the public record.
