TIFTON — A local family remembers a loved one who was killed last year and is still searching for answers.

Kim Espinoza, the mother of 22-year-old Jessie James Harris II, gunned down Aug. 18, 2014 in his home on Timmons Drive, says the family is offering a $3,000 reward, along with $1,000 from the Tifton Police Department, for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for the murder. She and the family encourages those who have any information regarding the shooting to please contact the police department at 229-382-3132.

Espinoza said they celebrated Harris’ 23rd birthday June 29 with a candlelight vigil at his gravesite. She said the loss has been really tough on the family.

“Somebody has to know — brother, sister, girlfriend, boyfriend, momma — somebody knows something somewhere,” she said.

Harris, the father of a now five-year-old son who was four years old and in the house at the time of the murder, loved life and his friends, said Espinoza.

The family released the following statement:

“Jessie Harris II, ‘Bambam’ as his loved ones knew him, was taken far too soon. A young man who was an aspiring musician found meaning in the lyrics of songs about the struggles in life. A proud Army veteran [who had] just finished his term came home to be close to his family and to raise his son. He had dreams, big dreams, and those dreams will never be obtained because of a single, cowardly act committed on Aug. 18, 2014. Someone knocked on his door, getting him out of his bed where he lay with his girlfriend and young son. A coward by all descriptions. How could someone so cold-hearted take the life of a young man just starting to live the life God planned for him? We need, no, we beg, that justice is served. Someone somewhere knows something. Think about it — what if it was your son, your brother, your friend, the father of your child? No one deserves to die the way he died.”

Espinoza said it’s tearing them apart not knowing anything.

“We just want answers,” said Cherry Plair, Harris’ aunt. “We have a five-year-old little boy we have to answer to one day.”

“He thinks his daddy is just sleeping,” Espinoza said. “He’s waiting for him to wake up and pick him up from school.”

As her eyes filled with tears, she said Harris got a chance to take his son to school that first week and “that was it.”

Plair said it’s a day-to-day process for them.

“There’s no getting over it. You learn to deal with it. There’s not an answer; there’s not really a healing. You just learn to cope,” she said.