“Turn Yourself In: Family Pleads for Justice After Tragic Death of Jose Ervin Jr.”
The family of Jose Ervin Jr. made an emotional appeal on Saturday, urging the man responsible for his death to turn himself in to authorities. “I just want to tell the guy, whoever you are, we know who you are—turn yourself in,” said his father, Jose Ervin Sr. “You see what you’ve done to my family.”
Ervin Jr. leaves behind twins, a boy and a girl, and his father expressed the family’s resolve to step up and raise them. “You took a good man away,” he lamented.
The tragic incident occurred early Friday morning at the Turney Pit Stop gas station on Turney Road, where Ervin Jr. was with friends ordering food and drinks after leaving a nearby bar. Surveillance footage from the gas station captured an argument between Ervin Jr. and another man in a white shirt. As Ervin and a woman, who identified herself as a bartender, walked back to their car, the two men began to fight.
In the video, the confrontation escalated as the man in the white shirt pulled a gun from his bag and chased Ervin across Turney Road, firing multiple shots as Ervin fell on the curb near a Dunkin’ shop. He later died from his injuries at the hospital.
“My son was begging, saying, ‘Don’t do this, don’t kill me, man,’ and he did it anyway,” his mother, Rhonda Ervin, said, tears streaming down her face.
Rhonda described Jose as a well-known and beloved figure in the community. “He used to go to the police station just to hang out with them. They knew him very well,” she recalled, mentioning a detective who was visibly shaken by the news of his death.
Jose’s sister, Chloe Ervin-Dozier, shared her heartbreak over not being able to see her brother before he passed. “When I got to the hospital, they told me I couldn’t see my brother,” she said. “They had already identified him and didn’t want us to see him like that.”
Chloe emphasized that her brother was not a threat to anyone and only wanted to have fun. “He brought everybody together, whether you liked each other or not.”
Now, the family is devastated by the loss of the man they described as the glue that held their family together. “He was awesome,” Rhonda said. “He would tell me, ‘Mommy, you’re okay, and you will be okay.’”
Jose leaves behind a wife, Scierra, who was featured in a News 5 story in August 2023. The couple, who shared the same birthday, celebrated the birth of their twins on that special day. Scierra expressed her heartbreak, saying their one-year-old twins and the child she is expecting will never know their father. “We just got married in June. We didn’t even get to be married for six months. This is real life. They don’t have the right to steal a life. We are not God. We don’t have that right.”
In honor of Jose, a balloon release will be held on Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Dunkin’ shop where the incident took place.
