ESPN probe into murder of UM football star points to ex-teammate as suspect
ESPN obtained police documents that suggest that a former teammate is a suspect in the 2006 murder of former University of Miami defensive lineman Bryan Pata.
Fourteen years after University of Miami defensive lineman Bryan Pata was shot to death outside his apartment, the name of one possible suspect has emerged in the mysterious murder — and it’s a former teammate.
An exhaustive ESPN investigation published last week revealed that police detectives had zeroed in on Rashaun Jones, now 35, a former UM defensive back who had once gotten into a fistfight with Pata and also dated the slain player’s girlfriend.
Miami-Dade police homicide detectives have never made an arrest in the case and the department has never publicly revealed that it had a suspect in the shocking slaying. Jones, interviewed twice by
ESPN, acknowledged to the network that he was a suspect but also insisted he was no killer.
“Hell no, ‘cuz I know I ain’t had nothing to do with it. So why would it bother me?” Jones told ESPN last year. “What happened 12 years ago, happened 12 years ago. It’s got nothing to do with me. ... I didn’t do it.”
Jones, who is from Lake City near Jacksonville, according to ESPN, could not be reached for comments by the Miami Herald. The ESPN article said he was jailed briefly in Columbia County near Jacksonville in 2018 for a probation violation. The story did not say where he is currently living. Several phone numbers listed on databases as belonging to Jones and family members have been disconnected.
The Miami-Dade Police
Department also declined to comment about the ESPN story on what remains an open investigation.
Several Pata family members, including siblings and his mother, had not returned phone calls or texts to the Miami Herald by Wednesday afternoon.
But Dave Howell, one of Pata’s best friends and a former teammate, said police should continue to pursue all leads in the case.
“It’s been so long and there hasn’t been any more information that’s led to an arrest,” he told the Herald. “And that just leads to more frustration for the family.”
Pata was a 22-year-old senior and budding star when he was shot in the back of the head and killed outside his home at the Colony Apartments in Kendall on Nov. 7, 2006. Pata, who was expected to be a high NFL draft pick, had just returned from practice.
There were no direct eyewitnesses to the shooting.
The police department’s homicide bureau had long been tight-lipped about details of the investigation, but eventually released some documents to ESPN.
ESPN’s report suggested that Jones appeared to be the most viable suspect. The network found one police records cover sheet that described Jones as a “suspect” but without explaining why.
The documents obtained by ESPN also revealed that in the hours after the shooting, Jones — who had been suspended because of a third positive marijuana test — skipped a mandatory team meeting at the campus athletic center. The story also says Jones changed his phone number on the day of the shooting and asked another student athlete “to borrow money to go out of town.”
The sports network first began working on the story in 2017, but the relationship with Miami-Dade Police soured. When the network went to court to ask for more police records, a judge declined to release them, citing an open investigation. But during that court hearing, then-homicide Lieutenant Joseph Zanconato testified that there was a “primary person of interest.”
“We have a strong belief who killed Bryan Pata,” Zanconato said, according to ESPN.