On December 20, 2017, police in Linden, New Jersey, responded to a shooting on the 800 block of Cleveland Avenue and found 27-year-old Alphonso Pearson outside his home with a gunshot wound to the chest. He was taken to Trinitas Regional Medical Center in Elizabeth and pronounced dead shortly after arrival.

Investigators identified a next-door neighbor, 23-year-old Shansey Abernathy, as the alleged shooter. Abernathy turned himself in the day after the shooting and was charged with murder and two weapons offenses. Reports say the confrontation grew out of a personal dispute between two men who had once been friends; witnesses described a commotion followed by a shot, and Pearson’s mother said she saw him grab his chest and fall backward.

In September 2018 Abernathy pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of first-degree aggravated manslaughter and was sentenced to 24 years in state prison with a requirement to serve at least 85 percent of the term before parole eligibility. Did anyone in Linden know Pearson and have details about the relationship between him and his neighbor?