Benjamin Collier, a 29-year-old Black male from Philadelphia, was killed on the evening of January 17, 2014, in Southwest Philadelphia. Around 6:10 p.m., 12th District officers were called to the 6100 block of Buist Avenue after a report of gunfire. When they arrived, they found Collier down in the roadway, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. He had lived on the 2600 block of South 61st Street, only a short distance from where he was found.
Collier was rushed to the Hospital of the
University of Pennsylvania, but the wounds were too severe. He was pronounced dead after arriving at the hospital. The available reports describe the shooting as a sudden street attack, with Collier discovered outside rather than inside a home or vehicle. The public details do not explain why he was targeted, whether he had been approached before the shooting, or whether the gunman or gunmen fled on foot or in a vehicle.
At the time the killing was first reported, police said no arrests had been made and the investigation was still active. Philadelphia authorities were offering a standing reward of up to $20,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever was responsible for a homicide in the city. No suspect name was released in the initial public reporting, and the early coverage did not identify a motive, a weapon recovery, or any relationship between Collier and the person who shot him.
Later online homicide-tracking records list Collier's case as “closed by arrest,” indicating that police eventually made an arrest in connection with his killing. However, the publicly available online sources located for this synopsis do not provide the name of the arrested person, the date of arrest, the charges filed, or the outcome of any court case. Because of that, the known public record shows a case that began as an unsolved Southwest Philadelphia street homicide and was later marked as closed by arrest, but without enough accessible detail to describe the suspect, trial, plea, conviction, or sentence.
