In the late hours of a February evening in Philadelphia, a simmering neighborhood dispute tragically boiled over, claiming the lives of two brothers. Symir Yelverton, a 23-year-old male, and his older brother, Raheem Martin, 24, were shot and killed on February 16, 2017. The violence erupted around 10:30 p.m. outside a cousin's home on the 300 block of East Upsal Street in the East Mount Airy section of the city, a place the brothers had recently begun staying.
Investigators believe the
shooting was the culmination of an ongoing argument between the brothers and a group of other men in the neighborhood. On that fatal night, Symir Yelberton was involved in a scuffle with these individuals. When his brother, Raheem Martin, came outside to help him, at least one of the men opened fire. Police received multiple 911 calls and arrived to find both brothers in a rear driveway with multiple gunshot wounds to their chests and torsos. They were rushed to Einstein Hospital but succumbed to their injuries shortly after arrival. Each of the young brothers was a father to a young child.
The grief for their mother, Maria Yelverton, was compounded by other recent heartbreaks. Just six days before her sons were murdered, her own mother had passed away from heart trouble. She described the loss of her sons as feeling like 'half of me is gone.' While court records indicated both brothers had prior drug-related arrests, their mother insisted that was in their past and that they were trying to build a better life, applying for jobs and picking up side work doing landscaping and carpentry.
In the immediate aftermath, police began searching for four male suspects who were seen fleeing the scene on foot. Homicide detectives were reported to be working 'around the clock' on the double homicide. Despite investigators believing they were making progress and that friction had developed between the brothers and a group of men, the specific motive for the escalating 'beef' remained unclear to them. Rumors circulated that the conflict may have started over a trivial argument in a corner store weeks earlier. As of March 2017, one month after the killings, no arrests had been made in the case.
