When Jeremy Washington Googles his name, one of the first things to show up are stories about his arrest for murder. As a bonus, there’s a rather menacing mugshot of a man just booked into jail.
According to court documents, however, the murder and aggravated assault charges brought against him in March in DeKalb County — for which he spent three weeks in jail — were a mistake and the charges were dropped.
The reason given: “misidentification of Washington as suspect.”
The 35-year-old father of a son was freed earlier this month. On Tuesday, the felony charges were dropped, six weeks after they were brought.
“You work your whole life to build character, but to have your character tarnished overnight for something you’re not involved in is not right,” Washington said.
Still the damage has been done. He has a record on the Internet for all future employers and acquaintances to see, in spite of this statement from DeKalb District Attorney Robert James: “Jeremy Washington was not responsible for the fatal shooting on March 14. After a thorough investigation, prosecutors and investigators with our office determined that Mr. Washington was misidentified, which led to his initial arrest. We did everything that we could to ensure his swift release and make certain that all charges against him were dropped.”
Washington said he has lost has job as a tractor-trailer driver, but he is talking with his boss about getting it back. Washington has no criminal record — other than this bogus arrest for murder and aggravated assault.
John Petrey, one of Washington’s lawyers, said it is frightening how easily police brought murder charges based on little investigation. It could happen to anyone, Petrey said.
“He was in an easily identifiable vehicle that was near the victims and that appeared to be the end of the investigation at that point,” Petrey said. “They just arrested him for murder.”
Initially, DeKalb County Police claimed that Washington repeatedly fired from his Chevrolet Suburban as he drove past a Ford Mustang at about 2:30 a.m. March 14. Darius Davenport, 33, was killed and his passenger wounded. The 22-year-old passenger recalled a phone number and an advertisement for clothes detergent written on the rear window of an SUV while he and Davenport waited behind it at a light on Moreland Avenue. The passenger said the shots came from that SUV, which belongs to Washington.
A week later, moments after pulling into his driveway, Washington was surrounded by 20 to 25 police officers. Their weapons were drawn.
“I said ‘I ain’t killed nobody,’” said Washington, who noted that he does not own a gun.
Washington was arrested and taken to jail.
He says he lost 25 pounds in three weeks. Breakfast in jail was either eggs or mashed potatoes or corn bread, he said. Dinner every day was bologna sandwiches. Lunch he didn’t eat because “I don’t know what the meat was.”
He is hopeful about returning to work.
“We made a call to his former job to try to get it back,” said Marcus Garner, a spokesman for the District Attorney’s Office. “He was about to get promoted. One of prosecutors called them to put in a good word. We wanted to do as much as we could to make him whole.”
But if his boss doesn’t decide to take him back, Washington fears it will be hard to find another job because potential employers will find out that he was once charged with murder, even if it was a mistake and he has documents to prove it.
“The problem with that is you do your job searches on the Internet,” Washington said. “Are they going to call me and ask me if I have the documents?”
In the meanwhile, he is trying to keep his 8-year-old son in the dark about the arrest. “I didn’t want him to have that image in his mind,” Washington said, explaining the boy was simply told his father was away.
Washington also is not living at his home, at least for now.
Friends of the dead man, Darius Davenport, have made threats on social media, so Washington is staying somewhere else, a place he wants to keep secret. Washington also doesn’t want to reveal where close relatives live for fear Davenport’s friends could find them.
And please don’t report where he had been working the day of the shooting because that could identified Washington’s former employer and give Davenport’s friends a hint of where to find him should he be rehired, Washington pleads.
He has sold his Suburban.
Washington was freed on a $25,000 bond on April 7, almost three weeks before the charges were formally dropped.
His lawyers had convinced prosecutors that Washington was innocent by using video from the five cameras at Club Blaze on Moreland Avenue where he stopped for something to eat. The videos were scheduled to be erased the day after Washington’s lawyers picked them up, according to his other attorney, Thomas Stubbs.
Stubbs said police apparently only looked at the part of the club’s video recordings to get the phone number printed on back window of Washington’s SUV and did not look at what happened before or after he left the parking lot. (Washington had the phone number on the vehicle to advertise a side business.)
“They took the fast way out without looking,” Stubbs said.
Maj. Stephen Fore, spokesman for the DeKalb County Police Department, said investigators secured an arrest warrant for Washington “after interviewing the surviving victim. The surviving victim was the one who told the detectives the shots came from that vehicle.”
Washington had just worked 14 hours and was headed home when he decided to stop at Club Blaze because there was a food stand in the parking lot that had hot dogs, hamburgers and sausage.
On the video, Washington is seen getting a sausage to go and walking past the two men who would later become targets. None of the men seem aware of the other.
Another camera picks up the image of a light-grey Armada — now believed to have been carrying the shooters — that had been parked in a side lot for about an hour.
Washington pulls out and turns north on Moreland in the direction of Interstate 675. Minutes later, Davenport’s car heads toward a different exit and the Armada with three men inside also begins to move. But a police car was blocking his path so Davenport reversed and went out the exit Washington had just used. The Armada also changed direction and followed.
Washington is stopped at the traffic light and Davenport is behind him. Moments later, shots are fired from the passenger side of the Armada.
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