Hammond man sentenced to 55 years in prison for drug-related murder

A Hammond man was sentenced to 55 years in prison Tuesday for killing a man who met with him to buy drugs.

In July, the jury was unable to reach a consensus in a murder and gun control case involving 20-year-old Davon Jones.

However, he was convicted of murder during the commission of a robbery, robbery causing grievous bodily harm, armed robbery and robbery.

Jones was accused of killing 20-year-old Amarion Holmes on April 9, 2022.

During the trial, assistant prosecutors Cole Galloway and Jacob Brandewie argued that technical evidence – cellphone location data and Facebook records – placed Jones at the scene of a drug deal that led to Holmes' death.

Defense attorneys Amanda Hires and Kerry Connor said the cellphone data was not a “dot” on a map and that individual messages left room for interpretation.

Hires said Tuesday that it was an “inconsistent verdict” and that they would ask for the minimum sentence of 45 years to give Jones the greatest possible chance of leaving prison as a “functioning adult.”

Holmes was found in his car in an alley in the 800 block of Drackert Street at about 4:30 p.m. with gunshot wounds to the head and arm. Jones lived about a block away. He was taken to the University of Chicago, where he was pronounced dead at 6 p.m.

Witnesses told police that the car had been standing in the alley for several minutes when a single shot was fired.

Based on Holmes' Facebook account, police assumed he was there to meet Jones to buy drugs, the affidavit states.

Jones deleted Holmes from his Facebook account five minutes after the shooting and left the next day to stay in Wisconsin for two weeks, the indictment says. He deleted his Facebook account a month later.

“My Facebook was hacked, so I deleted my (account),” Jones said in a phone call from prison.

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Originally published: September 24, 2024 at 16:00