Original subtitles

- My name is Lisa.

I am a mother.

One of my sons was shot dead.

I tracked down his killer.

And this is how I did it.

A man was shot to death

right in front of a group of people

while leaving a nightclub in North Philadelphia.

Police say the shooting was even captured on video,

but they're still having no success in finding

the person responsible.

I thought about RJ's dreams and goals,

and I thought about my little boy.

I couldn't let this person

who caused so much harm and pain just walk away.

I was obsessed. I became obsessed.

I was like, it will not be unsolved.

And I decided, I'm gonna have to do

the groundwork, the footwork.

I started doing my own surveillance.

I went undercover quietly

in the middle of the night, dawn hours.

My goal was to get as much information

to give to the detectives so they can have easier access

to any potential witnesses in order to try and identify

who the murderer was.

I wanted him to be scared.

I wanted him to know this person that you killed,

you picked the wrong one.

You picked the wrong one,

and you messed with the wrong mother.

And I was coming for you.

It's 5:30 on this Saturday, April 9.

Here are some of the stories that we're following

for you this morning...

I lived in North Philadelphia at the time.

But I decided to take a trip to see my mom.

We did some outings, went to lunch.

I called it an evening.

It was around 11:00, 11:30, and I took a shower,

and I went to bed.

And I wanted to sleep late, so I put my phone on vibrate.

RJ came around, uh,

we talked for a little bit.

He might have had a bite to eat.

He was gonna go out with a couple friends

to shoot some pool.

He borrowed $10, $20 from me.

I went to sleep, I had to work the next morning,

and, uh, he went on his way to shoot pool with his friends.

North Philadelphia is known

for its marginalized community.

It's a richness of culture there,

and it's a richness of Latin community,

but it was an area where I know

it's easy to find harm's way there.

I received the phone call from my sister

that RJ had been shot and that he was at Temple Hospital.

I was just shocked.

Along the way, I was just praying

that he was just shot, but he would be all right.

I heard the phone vibrate.

Turned over, phone vibrates again.

I said, I'm gonna turn it off.

When I picked it up, I had two missed calls from Jose

and one missed call from RJ's aunt.

I knew something bad had happened.

The phone rang again, and it was Jose.

And I answered it.

Two detectives walked up to me.

They told me, I'm sorry for your loss...

And walked away.

I didn't know what to feel,

how to feel, what to do.

I just crouched down and cried.

He's not coming back. He's gone.

Then I called Lisa.

Jose told me, Lisa, RJ's gone.

And I said, what do you mean he's gone?

And he said, RJ's gone, he's been shot.

And I said, I screamed, no.

And I hung up the phone and I just threw

the cell phone across the room.

And I was talking to myself, saying, Lisa, wake up, Lisa,

wake up, you're in a nightmare, wake up.

And then Luis called me from the scene

of the crime, my oldest son.

And he told me, Mom, it's true.

There is yellow tape here everywhere.

And when are you getting home, Mom?

My whole world just crashed.

It was like, this can't be happening.

How am I gonna survive this?

You're not supposed to bury your children.

They're supposed to bury you.

I grew up in Philadelphia, PA.

Had my first son, Luis, at 19,

and then had Christopher at 21.

And RJ was born.

I unwrapped the receiving blanket, counted his fingers.

Remember looking at his big, beautiful brown eyes,

full head of hair.

His name's Raymond, originally,

and he was a ray of light and sunshine.

- RJ was a loving, beautiful baby.

Loved him--loved him since the first time I put eyes on him.

- RJ was just full of smiles.

RJ will light up a room.

- It's gonna be a great day today.

It's already been good.

You know, be sipping on the coffee.

Me, I'm on, like, my third cup.

- He was protective over his family.

And if I needed him, I knew he was there,

because we were tight.

- My mom is a hater. She think we taking a picture.

It's the video camera.

Take a picture! Take a picture!

- I got it, yo.

He adored music.

He would write lyrics.

He would be writing songs, even as a kid.

He referred to himself as Hommi.

That was RJ's rap battle name.

He was always very affectionate.

He would say, if no one has told you they love you today,

I love you.

For Latinos, family is everything.

Um, you take care of your family.

We get to the coroner's office.

We went into this room,

and there was a window with blinds.

And RJ's body was laying there

with a white sheet covered to his shoulder.

And I think I was in a state of shock at that point.

And I said, yeah, that's--that's RJ.

And I said, okay, it's time to go.

And at that point, I wanted to know who murdered my son.

So I was calling the detective over and over again.

The detective, when I did get ahold of him, he told me,

we don't have a lead yet on the case.

We'll keep you informed.

Don't call us, we'll call you.

- Well, we knew that there were family members

that were hurting, and they were

relying on us to do our job.

And the investigation was already in motion.

We're looking for surveillance cameras

outside of that bar where he was shot to see if we could

identify vehicles that were driving

shortly after that murder.

Of course, we're collecting evidence

on the crime scene, as well,

that may give us clues as to who we're looking for.

It has been a violent day,

meanwhile, across Philadelphia.

Just before 3:00 a.m., officers on patrol

heard gunshots in the area of the 2400 block

of South 24th Street.

North Philadelphia is notoriously known

as the Badlands.

It's known for some of the purest and cheapest heroin.

Hand in hand with the drug trade goes violence.

Just the sheer volume of shootings and murders

that happen every day is completely overwhelming.

And unfortunately, some crimes are never solved.

- It was a kid in the hood that got shot,

so it wasn't important.

You get caught in the wrong spot,

you're a Latino in a bad neighborhood,

bad things can happen.

And in the back of my mind, I'm thinking,

RJ's case is gonna be forgotten

if I don't stay involved.

It was a murderer in the streets

and I needed to find out who took my son.

I didn't know where I was gonna start.

I had no clue.

I just knew I had to start.

A gunman opens fire and committed

a horrific mass shooting, and it was several dead,

including the suspect.

We'll bring you the latest.

I asked Jose

who were the friends that were with him

the night that he got killed?

Jose told me that it was Gunner and White Boy.

I told Jose, all right, I wanna go to your sister's house,

because they hang out there.

And Jose was like, what are you doing?

And I said, we need to find out what happened.

And the start is with the individuals

that were with him that night.

So then I went to the sister's house

and I told her to give the message to the friends

that I wanted them to tell me what happened.

We went to Jose's house.

Gunner comes in, says, I'm here to speak to RJ's mom.

Now my heart is racing.

And I'm like, oh, my God, I'm gonna talk

to someone who was there.

Told me there was a fight.

- Well, RJ's friend told us the more people he put down,

the more people kept coming towards him.

And he was just pushing them off best he could.

This one guy, they never spoke,

they didn't have no disagreement,

just walked up to him and shot him.

At that point, I said, what does he look like?

And he told me, he said he was chubby,

he's not that tall.

And he told me that he had a long beard and curly hair.

And he was Latino.

I said, well, Gunner, can you please just call?

And I begged him, I begged Gunner,

can you please call the cops,

can you please tell the detectives,

tell them everything you know.

And he told me that he was not gonna tell the cops.

There is a street code that they follow.

You don't snitch, you just handle it in the streets.

We're gonna get street retaliation.

And I said, I don't want street retaliation.

I wanna see that man in handcuffs.

I wanna go to court.

I wanna see that murderer charged.

I don't want him dead.

I don't want another mother to suffer from a loss.

Witnesses are reluctant to come forward

because there's a price to pay for cooperating with police,

and they're putting their own lives in danger.

Not all these people are willing to do that,

to risk it.

- It's a thing that happens in our community, unfortunately.

They feel like if they snitch, they're going to be dead,

or they're gonna come after their family,

and they don't feel protected.

So her fight was to do it the proper way

and do it the right way.

While we were at Jose's house,

another one of RJ's friends shows up.

I said, do you know anything?

At that point, she tells me there's a video.

And I said, a video of what?

What do you mean there's a video?

And she says, there's a video of the actual shooting,

and it's on social media.

It was on Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram.

My heart starts racing, because now I'm thinking,

I'm gonna look at the shooting of my son.

But also, another light bulb goes off.

I'm gonna possibly see witnesses that were present

while the shooting happened.

And my hope was that the video captured the shooter.

I immediately call the detective,

told him I had a video,

and I sent the links to my son, Luis.

And Luis immediately, he started looking at the videos.

Can you see the shooter in the video?

That's my first question. Can you see the shooter?

Ooh, ooh, shit! Ooh, shit!

And he says, Mom, you really can't

see a clear shot of the face.

At this point, I actually look at the video.

Ooh, ooh, shit! Ooh, shit!

I see RJ.

I see there's a scuffle.

They out here drawing.

They mixing and shit, they mixing.

- I hear people talking.

Oh, look, there's a fight happening.

The wretchedness, damn.

He looks to the right.

And then as he looks to the left,

you see the shooter walk up.

He sees the shooter, he sees the gun.

And right there, the shooter pulls the trigger.

Oh, we out of here.

My son just drops.

You hear witnesses saying, oh, they got shot,

the boy got shot.

But you don't hear anyone screaming, call 911.

So as I'm seeing this, my mind is going through this video,

this is gonna be what's gonna get us to this killer.

This is the tool. This is what we need.

Not only do I have to bury my son,

but I also have to watch his death.

Over...

Ooh, shit!

And over...

Damn.

And over again...

Oh, we out of here.

To identify witnesses.

But I knew that this was the last thing

I can do for RJ to get information to the detectives

so they could find his killer.

I was raised in a single family.

Well, my mother was a single mother.

We had domestic violence in my home,

and at the age of about 20, I turned to drugs.

I turned to using cocaine.

I, um, enjoyed the feeling of it, because it

made me forget that trauma that I had not dealt with.

I was in the midst of addiction,

and I knew that I was going really rock bottom.

Looking at RJ and trying to do right by RJ

was my motivation to stop using.

I went and got my high school diploma

and I got a good paying job as a frontline worker

in the social work field.

RJ saved me from the streets,

and he saved me from addiction.

He did.

How can I not honor his life by trying

to find out who took his life?

There has been so much violence

and heartbreak in America after multiple mass shootings

have ripped families and communities apart,

one after the other. The latest...

Me and my son Luis started working together,

working the case.

We start trying to identify witnesses.

And I was taking pictures of the actual video

while it's rolling...

So that we can enlarge their faces.

And I told Luis, see who comments

on the videos that was there.

If they said, yeah, I was there,

or yeah, I seen the boy get shot.

I printed everything out.

And I literally had a room in my house

that was focused on RJ's investigation.

And on this wall, I had a mapping process

that I did of witnesses, because I wanted

to see how it pieced together.

I'm talking to the detectives.

They're telling me they have no suspect.

Initially, detectives were able to get some names

of people who were there.

But at that time, people weren't willing

to come forward and tell us the name of the shooter,

despite the fact that some of these people

were no less than an arm length away from him

when he pulled the trigger.

It was simply disheartening.

And I decided, I'm gonna have to do

the groundwork, the footwork.

My goal here was, okay, identify the witnesses first.

Follow them.

Hang out in their locations to give that information

to the detectives.

I started doing my own surveillance.

Based on the information that I got

from the stills and the Facebook

and through my research, I identified areas

where potential witnesses hung out.

Then I would do surveillance in the targeted locations.

I didn't take Christopher with me.

I didn't take anyone with me. I went on my own.

And guess what? I could become the target.

Because it is the ghetto, it's the hood.

- When my mom came to me about the fact of,

she wanted to take it to the neighborhood,

take it to the area where he was shot and killed,

I was skeptical.

Depending on what area she was going into,

because we're talking about North Philadelphia here.

We're talking about the Badlands.

We're talking about high drug and gun violence.

- I had to be discreet about it,

and there was times when I had to just park and follow

individuals and try to identify their home locations

based on where they were hanging at.

It was unsafe, but it was a risk I was willing to take

to get witnesses.

I was doing surveillance quietly

in the middle of the night.

I wasn't concerned at that point about my safety.

My obsession to identify this murderer

was so much stronger than my fear.

That was my drive that ignited that fire.

Some of these neighborhoods,

you don't walk in and ask questions, you know.

They could have taken her down any time, any moment.

I had to change my attire.

So I would put, like, something on my head,

like hats, or I did, like,

turban kind of style, scarves on my head.

I had to be strategic.

There was so many witnesses that I identified.

There was one lady that worked in a supermarket

like a half block down from where RJ was murdered.

She was a cashier.

I went a couple of times to that supermarket

and selected that cashier.

And guess what? I started a conversation.

Little by little, by the third time, I'm like,

did you hear about that shooting in B and Allegheny?

I knew she was there.

"Yeah, I did.

I know about the shooting. I was there."

Oh, you was?

Did you see anything?

She described the same stock and build.

Didn't give me details of the face.

So I knew a little information.

In our community, when things doesn't seem

like they're going your way, the next best thing

is try to take things in your own hands.

And she did.

- Gunner's friend had given me one video,

but then when we looked at social media,

we found two additional videos from different angles.

There was another gentleman.

His comment said, "I was so close

that the body fell on me."

That person, in my mind,

was close enough to see the shooter.

So I was targeting that individual.

I went into that Facebook and I identified people

who were friends to some friends that I knew.

I went to one lady and I said, hey, by any chance,

do you know this individual?

Yeah, I do, I know him.

And I said, do you know where he lives?

She said, look, I don't have his information,

but I have his mother's information.

So I got the mother's address.

Then I found out where the mother went to church.

Then I spoke to RJ's grandmother,

because they had an associated church.

And apparently, this mother

had asked for prayer at church,

because her son had been present at a shooting

with a gun in B and Allegheny.

So at this point, I'm thinking, that's the shooter.

He was dark skinned, had an afro, had the beard,

but he didn't have the stocky build.

So that was the only thing that was off.

I was putting this puzzle together,

and every little piece and information

that I got, it just connected.

And I would go home and connect another address

or another person in order to try and identify

who the murderer was.

So my niece called me.

She was upset about RJ's death, and she mentioned it

when a coworker approached her.

The coworker told her that her sister

had helped someone who got shot on that same day

at that same location.

I immediately wanted to talk to them to find out

what happened that night with RJ, just in case

they know who the killer is.

My phone rang. It was Lisa on the other end.

She wanted to know what happened.

It was actually just a regular, active, beautiful night.

You know, people were out in the streets.

It's Philadelphia.

You know, it is a city that loves its sports,

loves its people, great nightlife.

I was in the nightclub downstairs

with a friend celebrating her birthday.

Being that my friend's boyfriend owned the bar,

we closed the bar at night, so it was fairly late.

We were leaving, closed the gates.

And then you just hear a loud pop and screaming.

I just remember people standing over RJ's body,

but nobody was doing anything.

And I knew I had to help.

She said he was laying on the ground.

She went to help him. She said RJ was awake.

He looked dazed.

She told me he had the biggest beautiful brown eyes.

I looked down at him. He looked confused.

He was there for a moment, and then one last blink,

and you can see that, you know, he was no longer there.

Then I proceeded to do CPR for him.

As doing so, I just started screaming, call 911.

Cops finally got there, which felt like forever.

That's when the cops do what they--

they scoop and carry, grabbed him,

threw him in the back of the cruiser, and took off.

Unfortunately, I didn't see the act of violence.

I was no help of being able to identify

the person who had done this to RJ.

Um, just my portion of afterwards.

I feel bad still.

I hurt for the pain that she has of not having her son RJ.

Um, I wish it were different.

- It felt good to know that my son wasn't alone

on the cold ground, dying by himself,

just looking around.

She was RJ's Earth angel.

And I'm forever grateful to her.

She specifically wanted to thank me

for being there for her son.

The one line that she did say to me was, um...

"It was nice knowing that my son came into this world

"in a woman's arms

and had passed in a woman's arms."

Um...

that kind of will always stick with me.

So RJ, as a teenager,

started making his own choices.

He was using weed, and this weed was leading him

to different paths.

And he started spending more time in North Philadelphia.

It is an area where you see homelessness,

where you see prevalent drug addiction.

He started getting more withdrawn from the family

and becoming more into his circle of friends.

RJ, I guess, started changing

once my mom and his dad got divorced.

That, I really think, affected him.

He started gravitating more towards the streets

than he was before.

I knew that the choices that he was making

could put him in harm's way.

And once he did get locked up for selling weed.

And at a point, I told RJ, the streets

are gonna either take your life or it's taking your freedom.

RJ became a father at the age of, I believe he was 19.

And he had JoJo, his daughter.

He started shying away from the drug dealing

and started doing some construction work.

And he wanted to be a good father.

I felt ecstatic.

I felt that RJ was gonna be safe again,

that he was removing himself from harm's way.

- It was his time to leave all the childhood stuff behind

and become the man that we all knew that he could be.

I got to a point with the detectives

where I was calling and I wasn't getting a response.

So at that point, I wrote to his superior.

The detectives finally called me.

And they told me they would meet me at my place of work.

After the shooting, we ran down every witness,

every lead we had, but were in a sense, hopeless,

because we weren't getting answers.

The first thing I told them was,

I need you to contact me.

I've been calling you every day.

And they said, well, we really don't have much.

And they told me, even if we have updates,

we can't share that information with you.

And I said, okay, well, you're not sharing with me,

I can share with you.

I had printed out separate piles

of seven or eight witnesses.

And I started giving names.

They said, how did you get that information?

And I said, the streets. I've been out there.

If you go to the streets, they'll talk.

- She was able to speak with people in a way

that police detectives are unable to do

out in those neighborhoods.

She was doing everything that she could

on her end to gather information,

to give us new leads of individuals

we could identify and speak with.

We're speaking to these witnesses

and we brought them down to the Homicide Unit,

tried to develop a relationship, a rapport

with them, and make them feel as comfortable as we could

and get the information they had.

But none of those individuals were willing to give us

even a clue to help the family of RJ find justice,

just because of fear factor of being labeled a snitch

and the consequences that come from that

in those neighborhoods.

It's difficult to remain positive.

There probably wasn't a single night I went to sleep

where I wasn't thinking, how can I find a way

to get a witness to come forward and solve this murder?

I gave the detectives names of witnesses.

I gave them videos of the shooting...

And it didn't lead to anything.

I felt I hit a brick wall.

I felt that I was hitting a dead end.

There was no more connecting the dots.

The investigation, my research was stagnated.

I decided to take a different approach.

I'm gonna reach out and see if I can soften some hearts

of these witnesses.

And that's what I did.

I wanted media coverage.

And my niece told me about this journalist

that did an article about retrieving a gun

very quickly in Philadelphia.

Honestly, when I first got the call,

I thought, you know, this--the--

the numbers are not on her side.

In a lot of ways, Lisa did not differ

from a lot of the mothers that I have followed.

But what Lisa had was this fire in her.

Lisa was desperately trying to keep her son

from being another statistic in Philadelphia.

So we sat down, and she told me all that she knew.

Uh, but really, the story for me was about this mother

who was on a mission to make sure

that she got justice for her son.

- A man was shot to death right in front of a group of people

while leaving a nightclub in North Philadelphia.

Now the victim's mother is asking for your help.

This person is walking free in our streets,

and they can hurt your son, your daughter, your child.

There's a murderer out there.

Helen Ubinas started tracking me, started tracking my story.

That brought interest to the other networks

and the news media.

- We hear one mother's compelling story

and her courage to fight for justice.

I wanted it to be known to the whole community,

to Philadelphia, I'm Lisa Espinosa,

and I'm looking for my son's murderer.

There were plenty of witnesses

that saw what happened, and no one's coming forth.

- Yeah, in the Latino community,

there's a snitch code.

They say snitches get stitches.

I wanted the killer to know, I'm looking for you.

And I knew that through that media outlet

and me making noise, he was gonna hear.

Our community needs to get together and get empowered

and go against these individuals

who are cold-blooded killers.

I reached out to Roz, Rosalind Pichardo,

Operation Save Our City.

Someone told me that she did protests and marches

and she worked with families of homicide.

She told me about RJ's death.

It was so close to where I live.

It's, like, a couple blocks from my house.

So this could be anyone that I know, you know?

And I kind of connected right away.

I've lost my boyfriend to murder.

My ex-boyfriend, he was shot himself, too.

And then I lost my brother, Alexander Martinez, to murder.

When my brother was murdered, uh,

we didn't get much information from, like, the detectives.

So that's when Operation Save Our City was born,

where we can advocate for our own selves.

- This is where it all happened.

This is the club that RJ was in on April 10, 2016.

And on the third white line was where he was shot

and his body dropped.

And in that corner right there

is where I did the first protest.

We started protesting and marching

through the neighborhoods, and all these mothers

were being introduced to me that was telling me,

I lost my son, I lost my son.

I met a lady who lost her son April 13, three days after RJ,

whose case is still unsolved.

What do we want? Justice!

When do we want it? Now!

What do we want? Justice!

When do we want it? Now!

And we asked people, do you know of anything?

Have you heard about this murder?

This murder happened around the corner.

- Lisa put herself in danger every single day

that she was investigating her son's murder.

She may be knocking on the door of the person

who's responsible for killing her son.

Those taking part in this group photograph

have all been impacted by gun violence

on the streets of Philadelphia.

Because gun violence

has hit each one of them.

There was just something about her energy

not like any mother that I've ever helped.

Although you can see the pain in her eyes,

there was, like, no stopping her.

There was no fear.

Because she was ruffling a lot of feathers

in the neighborhood.

- I was worried they had a killer right now

that was loose out in the streets

who didn't care about killing RJ.

So why would he care about hurting

somebody else within the family?

- I started getting anonymous texts from unknown numbers.

"Stop talking, bitch."

"If you don't stop, we're coming after your family."

"You're gonna die like your-- like your son."

At this point, though, my family

started getting worried.

My sons got to a point where they felt

I was making too much noise.

They said, well, Mom, we lost RJ.

We don't wanna lose you.

Then I let my sons know, I can't stop.

I knew I was close because I was already getting threats.

I knew that I was making the killer uncomfortable.

Any information I got from the protests

could lead to the next location

to do targeted outreach

in different locations within the city.

Now to the searing heat here in the Northeast,

where they have extended a heat emergency.

And we are slated to hit 95 once again today.

It's almost unbelievable.

We did a targeted outreach.

Hot summer day, was a heat wave day.

And at this point, I'm putting flyers on cars,

I'm putting flyers in all the mailboxes.

And that day, I got a lead.

Pulled someone aside who said, you need to be careful.

The killer, he's a drug dealer.

He's always walking with a gun.

I said, come over here, well, talk to me a little bit.

We'll pretend like we're talking about the flyer.

I heard the killer drives a car.

What's the car color?

He said, oh, he's driving a two-tone gray Crown Regal.

And I said, well, tell me a little bit more, come on.

And he tells me, he's known by Fax, and he's known by G.

But you gotta be careful.

He hangs out in 7th and Tioga.

He deals drugs.

And he also has a drug corner a block down

on 6th Street and Westmoreland,

a few blocks away from where RJ was shot.

It gave me hope that I would be able to give some more

detailed information to the police

for them to make an arrest.

We're actually approaching the area where the killer

had his drug corner.

He ran this drug corner here in this corner right here.

We're on 6th and Allegheny now.

This is a very high drug trafficking dangerous place

to be in the evenings.

I went by myself to look for the car.

And I just looked and looked and see

if anybody with that build or with that curly hair

and the beard was selling drugs at that location.

As I'm getting to the next corner

of the end of the street,

there's a group of people that knew RJ.

And one individual comes and tells me,

the killer hangs out at a motorcycle club

in 5th and Westmoreland.

I organize a National Day of Remembrance for murder victims

right there on that corner.

So we had many families that came,

and they brought their loved ones' belongings,

pictures of their loved ones.

If they were unsolved cases, I asked them to bring

reward signs, flyers to distribute.

- We had dealers, um, who own most of the block, um,

the surrounding blocks around it.

So it was very dangerous.

- If the killer was in this area,

I wanted him to know that I was a mother on a mission.

And I wanted justice.

When I heard that his name was G or Fax,

I gave that information to detectives.

When they told me that he was a drug dealer,

I gave that information to them.

When they told me he hung out at the motorcycle club

in 5th and Westmoreland, I gave that information.

All of this information I have gathered,

the detectives are not giving me any feedback.

I felt that the investigation wasn't rolling fast enough.

They weren't getting anyone in custody.

- It was a lot of frustration.

It was anger, questions.

But why the police aren't doing anything.

But it made her stronger,

and it made her wanna fight even more.

She was desperate.

She was begging, really, begging reporters

to please tell her story.

I hoped that when I wrote about Lisa,

people would understand that this mother is not going away,

that I have her back.

I'm also not going away until someone could help her

solve RJ's murder.

I appear on the cover

of "The Philadelphia Inquirer."

Helen Ubinas does an article, "Mother on a mission."

Now it's on the front page.

The pressure was on the cops.

The story's getting heard.

Philadelphia Police Homicide Unit is gonna move.

There's something has to happen.

Went to work.

5:00 I get a call.

Raymond's case has been given to the Special Task Force.

Now there's five detectives on the case.

We're gonna be working on it.

Things started to develop very rapidly.

Our real-time crime center

received an anonymous phone call

from an individual who had information

related to RJ's killing.

And that ignited a whole new lead in the investigation.

That led us to Giovanny Perales.

Once we learned Giovanny Perales was a suspect,

we were able to piece together his cell phone records,

which showed he was hitting off of cell towers

right at the area of the crime.

And you could see he was traveling away

from the crime scene and then hitting off

of a different cell phone tower

in the area of where we knew

he had an address, where he lived.

Without Lisa's work through the papers, through the media,

TV stations, and keeping it on the forefront

of everybody's brains,

we may not have ever received that anonymous phone call.

The detectives sent me a text.

And they say, we're on our way to charge a suspect.

And I'm like, oh, my God, they're going, they're going,

they're going to get this person.

He was staying at a home

not far from where the murder took place.

Detectives prepared a search warrant.

And Giovanny Perales was taken into custody.

And then about two hours later, I get a text.

It says, "The suspect is in custody

and has been officially charged."

And at that point...

I let out such a scream.

It was just like, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!"

It felt so good.

And that was liberating.

- She said, Christopher, they got him, they got him.

It's over.

It was a relief that my mom can now

finally start grieving.

The fact that this one mom

was able to get some answers,

some accountability, some justice,

wasn't just something for Lisa.

Suddenly I thought, there's a reason why you

keep writing these columns.

It's not a waste of time.

Something could happen.

Something did happen.

- I remember I was excited,

but I still wasn't content

until we heard what that final verdict was going to be.

It's the preliminary hearing day.

We're sitting there, they bring out RJ's murderer.

I sat in the front. I wanted him to see me.

Because I knew he knew me already.

They said his name, Giovanny Perales.

He was known in the streets for G.

Giovanny Perales pleaded guilty.

He chose not to say anything.

So I never got a response from him.

He came across as having no remorse at all.

I miss RJ's presence,

his laughter.

I miss my little brother.

Um...

Can't get one back.

Don't want one back.

Don't need another one.

Um, but I think his aura

is primarily what I miss from him.

- This quilt has the clothes he was wearing

the day that he was murdered.

The little hole in the middle of the flower

is actually where the bullet pierced his chest.

At times, I just wanna feel his warmth and his hug,

so I put it around me.

And the warmth of the blanket, I just close my eyes

and feel like it's him just holding me.

- I just keep the good memories that I have with him.

There were a lot of them, there were a lot of them.

What I miss most about RJ is his smile and personality.

So in aiming to find RJ's murderer,

a ripple effect happened.

You're looking live at a rally in Fairmount Park.

It's all part of National Gun Violence

Awareness Wear Orange Day.

This comes as violence in our area is up.

I wanted to work with families of unsolved cases,

so my protesters didn't stop.

I was determined that I had to live again for RJ.

So now I honor his memory.

I tell my story, my survivor story,

that gun violence is real and it could touch your home.

We all are bonded by our grief and by our loss.

But life continues, and if the shoe was on the other foot

and it was me that had been murdered,

I would want my family to live the life I couldn't live.