A Philly teen saw a murder, called 911 — and did 15 years in prison. Now, he’s exonerated.

When teenager Gary Hall was gunned down on a Nicetown street in 2006, his friends all seemed to know who did it.

They blamed Ivan Simmons, whose little brother had been seen arguing with Hall minutes earlier. A few months later, Simmons was fatally shot in what Hall’s friends told police was an act of revenge for Hall’s killing. And after that, a friend of Simmons’ shot Hall’s cousin — in retaliation for the retaliation.

Yet Philadelphia police disregarded those statements, court filings show. Instead, they arrested someone else: David Sparks, a 16-year-old who’d been picked up for violating curfew the night of Hall’s killing.

Sparks was convicted and served 15 years in prison for Hall’s murder. He was exonerated Monday after the District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) and the Pennsylvania Innocence Project unearthed extensive, previously undisclosed evidence in police files pointing to Simmons as the shooter.

The case was the subject of a 2018 Inquirer investigation that highlighted evidence pointing to Sparks’ innocence. It noted that Sparks was actually an eyewitness to the shooting — even sticking around to call 911.

On that recorded call, Sparks’ voice can be heard, tinny but urgent.

“Somebody got shot. He’s possibly dying,” he told the dispatcher. “Please could you hurry up. Please.”

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The new investigation unearthed ballistic evidence in the police file that the gun used to kill Hall was used in another killing police believed Simmons had committed four days earlier. Also in the file was a statement from an eyewitness to Hall’s killing who was later arrested for one of the retaliatory shootings. That witness told police how Simmons shooting Hall had instigated the cycle of violence.

“Based on that evidence, the court is convinced that the verdict should be overturned,” Common Pleas Court Judge Scott DiClaudio said Monday. He noted that Sparks’ was the sixth murder conviction he had tossed out in three days. “That’s gotta be a world record.”

Three of those cases involved disgraced former homicide detective Philip Nordo, who was convicted of raping informants in the course of investigations that yielded at least 15 wrongful convictions.

In Sparks’ case, which was assigned to homicide Detective Donald Marano, prosecutors said it was not clear why the undisclosed evidence was not turned over to the trial prosecutor, James Berardinelli. Neither Marano nor Berardinelli could be reached for comment Monday.

“This just shows the power of finally getting information from those homicide files,” said Nilam Sanghvi of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, who worked on the case with lawyer Jim Figorski. “It really proved what David has always said, what the neighborhood has always said, was the truth.”

» READ MORE: Philly men Curtis Kingwood and Faheem Davis exonerated in case linked to tainted ex-detective

In 2008, Sparks waived his right to a jury and stood trial before Judge Sheila Woods-Skipper.

The case against him rested largely on two eyewitnesses, sisters who were 12 and 14 years old when they saw the shooting from inside a Chinese takeout store. Their testimony was inconsistent, evolving from their initial statements to testimony at the preliminary hearing, and again during the trial.

A third witness denied having given a statement to homicide detectives, testifying: “They wrote it down and made me sign the papers. Those are not my own words.”

Sparks’ defense lawyer presented testimony from Sparks’ girlfriend at the time, who said she saw Simmons shoot Hall. But, due her relationship with Sparks, Woods-Skipper did not credit that statement. Instead, she found him guilty and sentenced him to life in prison with no possibility of parole.

The Pennsylvania Innocence Project first took on the case in 2013. Figorski joined the case when Sparks became eligible for a new sentence, based on a U.S. Supreme Court decision that minors could not be subjected to mandatory life-without-parole sentences. But it was not until the district attorney’s office turned over its case file that the ballistics and other evidence surfaced.

The information they found revealed that police knew well before Sparks went to trial about the evidence linking Simmons to Hall’s killing.

Sparks’ mother, Tameeka Sparks, still lives in the neighborhood where her son was arrested. Over the years, she said, residents would often tell her they knew her son was innocent — but no one was willing to come forward. Now, though, she’s looking ahead.

On David Sparks’ to-do list: Surprise his 16-year-old daughter, who didn’t yet know he had been exonerated. And then, hopefully, an Eagles game.

For Sparks’ younger brother, Dominic White, Sparks’ exoneration was a bittersweet moment — cause for relief, but not celebration.

“This is past due. We’re burnt out,” he said. “We feel like he never should have been there. So at this point we just want to get away. There’s nothing to celebrate.”

Last week, DiClaudio tossed out four other convictions, including another Pennsylvania Innocence Project case.

In that case, Eddie Ramirez, convicted of the 1995 murder of Joyce Dennis, won a new trial after extensive new evidence was uncovered in the police file — including exculpatory DNA evidence on the murder weapon. Multiple witnesses in the case also recanted their statements, alleging they had been coerced by homicide detectives.

Sparks’ conviction was one of two overturned on Monday. Hall’s family did not attend but provided a statement informing the court that the proceeding was “retraumatizing.”

District Attorney Larry Krasner, whose administration’s policy of disclosing homicide files to petitioners has revealed undisclosed evidence in dozens of cases, said the exonerations reflected an effort to right what he likened to “war crimes” by previous administrations.

”I think all of this is illustrative of the terrible consequences of police officers or prosecutors who think they can do what they want — who are not guided by their oath to tell the truth all the time or to seek justice,” he said.

The other case was Reafeal Fields’ conviction in the 2010 murder of Michael Smith, 24, in North Philadelphia.

That case, handled by Nordo, also involved extensive undisclosed evidence, most of it regarding Nordo’s history of misconduct. Based on that evidence, the prosecutor and judge agreed to allow Fields to plead guilty to third-degree murder and accept a 21- to 42-year negotiated sentence.

DiClaudio told Smith’s family, including Smith’s mother, Tyra, and Smith’s 13-year-old son, MeKaaeel: “I want to make sure that if we resolve it this way, this is the end of your nightmare.”

» READ MORE: Losing Conviction: A series about homicide investigations in Philadelphia

For Tyra Smith, though, it was just a new chapter — since now she’ll have to dread Fields’ parole hearings. She tries to remind MeKaaeel, who was born after his father’s death, of who Michael Smith was: “not perfect, but a person who was willing to help everybody. He planned to have his son. He wanted to be a father.”

“I feel like the city dropped the ball. [Nordo] never should have been out there handling cases. Now, everybody has to relive and rehash this,” she said.