Columbus police arrested Jamar Brantley, 33, on Saturday, November 14, and charged him with murder in the November 6 shooting death of 17-year-old De’Montrez Jackson, who was found on a lawn on the city’s Far East Side, according to a Columbus police news release reported by The Columbus Dispatch. Brantley, of the city’s East Side, is scheduled for arraignment on Monday, November 16, in Franklin County Municipal Court, the Dispatch reported.
Jackson was found at about 5:10 a.m. on November 6 in the 1300 block of Yorkland Road, near Reynoldsburg, after officers responded to a report of a dead person on a lawn, Columbus police said in their earlier account of the case, reported by The Columbus Dispatch at the time. Officers found the teenager suffering from at least one gunshot wound, and Columbus Division of Fire medics pronounced him dead at the scene at about 5:20 a.m., police said.
For more than a week, the killing was an open homicide investigation with no publicly identified suspect. Columbus police homicide detectives worked to determine the circumstances of the shooting, police said in the November 6 account, and asked anyone with information to contact the Homicide Unit or Central Ohio Crime Stoppers. Saturday’s arrest, announced in the police news release reported by the Dispatch, is the first charge filed in the case.
The release, as reported by the Dispatch, does not describe what evidence led detectives to Brantley, and no motive has been publicly stated by police. Brantley faces a single murder charge in connection with Jackson’s death, according to the release.
An arrest is a charge, not a conviction, and Brantley is presumed innocent as the case moves through the courts. After arraignment, a felony case filed in municipal court is ordinarily presented to a Franklin County grand jury, which decides whether to return an indictment and move the case to the Court of Common Pleas for trial.
What happens next is Monday’s arraignment in Franklin County Municipal Court, where the charge will be formally read and bond addressed. Anyone with information about the November 6 shooting can still contact the Columbus police Homicide Unit at 614-645-4730 or Central Ohio Crime Stoppers at 614-461-8477, the numbers police published with their original account of the case. Details in this report are from Columbus police, as reported by The Columbus Dispatch.