Suspect rejects plea deal paving way for murder trial in December
A call to 911 by a kidnapped man in February 2021 led to the arrests of two men in a Fayetteville slaying that happened the day before, court records in the case reveal.
Myshon Lamar Jackson, 22, of Broadway, is charged with first-degree murder in the Feb. 9, 2021, shooting death of Omar Lewis White, 26, of Virginia.
In Cumberland County Superior Court on Wednesday, Jackson rejected a plea deal, clearing the way for a December murder trial.
His codefendant in the killing, Juan Robert Maddox, 23, of Fayetteville, pleaded guilty last November to second-degree murder, second-degree kidnapping and an unrelated fraud charge and was sentenced from 18 years to 22 years, eight months in prison.
He was given credit for the 21 months he served in custody awaiting trial and has a prison release date of March 2042.
It was Maddox’s involvement in the kidnapping on Feb. 10, 2021, a day after White was killed, that gave police the evidence used to charge both men in the killing, court records show.
Omar White’s murder
According to the records, White was shot multiple times in the parking lot of building 4804 at the Vue Apartment Homes in the area of Raeford Road and Scotland Drive. He was pronounced dead at the hospital. The autopsy revealed he was shot four times in the back, neck and face.
A caller to 911 reported she heard the gunfire, saw White fall from the driver’s seat of a vehicle into the parking lot and two men running toward building 4800. Another witness saw one man run into apartment C, slam the door and close the blinds. When police made contact with the occupants, they found Jackson and Maddox inside. Officers also reportedly found marijuana and a firearm in the apartment, the record said.
Maddox and Jackson went to the Fayetteville Police Department for an interview and were released, the record said. Jackson “did not wish to speak to detectives and Maddox said he did not have any involvement regarding the death of White,” the charging document states.
The kidnapping
A break in the homicide case came a day after the killing when a 26-year-old man called 911 and said he had been abducted at gunpoint from his Fayetteville home by five men, one of whom was Maddox, an affidavit said. The man called 911 from beneath a trailer where he’d been sent by his captors to retrieve one of two guns they ordered him to hide after White’s killing, the record said.
The kidnapped man told police that Maddox and the others had demanded the weapons back, forcing him — at gunpoint and with threats to harm his family — to take the group to a field to retrieve a .22 caliber revolver the victim had thrown there the previous day.
Then, the record states, the kidnapping victim lied and told the group the second weapon was under a trailer on Eleanor Drive.
It was while he was under the trailer that he called 911 for help, the record states. An affidavit for a search warrant in the case said that the man told police where to recover the second weapon and detectives collected it and believe it was used in the killing.
The affidavit states Jackson’s fingerprints were found on the front passenger door of White’s vehicle and a witness alleged that prior to the shooting, the men left apartment C at the complex where White was killed to rob someone, and returned with a handgun, the search warrant documents said.
Prison records show that Maddox is incarcerated in the Bertie Correctional Institution, a medium-security prison in Windsor. Jackson is being held without bail in the Cumberland County jail.
Devonte Baker, who was also charged in the kidnapping, pleaded guilty in March to conspiracy to commit kidnapping and has since served his time, court and prison records show. At least two others were charged in the kidnapping, but the dispositions of those cases could not be discerned Friday.