'Half of me is gone': A month on, a mother mourns two sons murdered in East Mount Airy

Valentine's Day was Maria Yelverton's favorite holiday.

She'd flood her house with pink decorations, from the ceilings to her front windows. She'd pack candy in Chinese takeout containers for her five children — Snickers bars, Butterfingers, Reese's cups. She loved celebrating love.

"That day was just special for me," she said.

But this year, on Feb. 10, Yelverton's mother died from heart trouble.

And six days later,  two of Yelverton's sons were shot dead outside a cousin's home in East Mount Airy.

Yelverton's favorite time of year suddenly became the worst week of her life.

"It's like half of me is gone," she said through tears in her Frankford living room Thursday afternoon, the one-month anniversary of her sons' slayings. "I'm not the same person. I know I'm not."

The city has recorded 59 murders this year as of Wednesday, according to police statistics. But few families ever experience two on the same day. And prior to Feb. 16, only one other slaying had been recorded in East Mount Airy within the last year, police statistics say.

Homicide Capt. James Clark said detectives were "working around the clock" on the double homicide and making progress, though he declined to offer specifics. He said investigators believed Yelverton's sons — Symir Yelverton, 23, and Raheem Martin, 24 — had developed "friction" with a group of men in the neighborhood, though police were not certain what the tension was about.

It ended around 11 p.m., outside the house where the brothers had been living with cousins on the 300 block of East Upsal Street. Symir Yelverton got into a scuffle with the group of adversaries, police said, and when Martin came out to help, one of the men started shooting.

Maria Yelverton's sister, Clara Kendrick, said rumors were swirling that the conflict originated weeks earlier over a trivial argument in a corner store and continued to fester as the group and the brothers crossed paths.

Clark said he couldn't speculate on motive since the case was still being investigated.

"They had a beef with some guys that lived in the neighborhood," he said. "What it's over, I don't know."

Yelverton and Martin each had drug-related arrests a few years ago, according to court records, but Maria Yelverton insisted they weren't involved in the lifestyle anymore. Both brothers had applied for jobs at Walmart with the help of their cousin, Maria Yelverton said, and she said Martin and Yelverton often picked up side jobs doing landscaping work or carpentry.

Drugs, she said, were "in the past."

The brothers — each of whom had a young child — are now buried side by side, according to their mother. Over the past month, Maria Yelverton has broken down while looking at pictures of them, sat crying and praying on her daughter's bathroom floor, and thought back to the moment she learned her sons were dead.

"The doctor told me she tried her best with both of them," Yelverton said. "But she couldn't save either one."

Now she waits, and hopes, for justice. She wants her day in court, saying too many people saw the crime to leave it unsolved. The "no-snitching" code is an excuse born of convenience, she believes, a concept that remains abstract until you experience its drawbacks first-hand.

"It's so easy for people to say," Yelverton said. "It's easy because they didn't lose anybody."

She's not sure what she'll do when her favorite holiday comes around next February. But after experiencing such tragedy this year, she knows the easiest solution might be to do something she couldn't have imagined a few months ago.

"I think," she said, "I'll let it go by."