A DeKalb County murder victim named his killer in his last words, police said.
Marcus Ventress is accused of shooting and killing Ryan Guider on May 26.
Thursday, Ventress, 28, was in front of a DeKalb County Magistrate Court judge for a probable cause hearing when he heard an investigator repeat Guider's dying words.
"Ryan was laying there saying, 'I can't believe Marcus shot me,'" DeKalb Police Detective L. Shuler told the court. He said Guider said the words over and over to a woman who came to his aid after the shooting.
Police said Guider, 26, burglarized Ventress' home and punched Ventress' mother earlier this year.
The shooting, authorities said, was retribution.
"Guider told [a witness] that Marcus must've been angry because of the robbery," Shuler said.
Several witnesses were able to identify Ventress at the crime scene, police said.
Guider's funeral was punctuated by a deadly shootout in the parking lot of Victory for the World Baptist Church in Lithonia, which left two men -- Carlos Henderson Jr., 19, and Delmetrius Heard, 28 -- dead.
Despite rumors that a then-at-large Ventress was at the funeral, police said the two victims killed one another.
Prior to Guider's death, Ventress had multiple arrests between 2002 and 2009 in Elkhart County, Ind., about 125 miles southeast of Chicago, on accusations that included attempted murder, drug possession, gambling and resisting arrest, according to Indiana jail records.
While searchers looked up north for him, U.S. marshals and the DeKalb County Sheriff's Office fugitive squad captured Ventress on July 3 in Columbus.
Shuler said said Guider's wounds were consistent with those made by a "small-caliber handgun," and pointed to three bullets -- two .40-caliber, and one .380 -- found after the shooting at Ventress' home.
Still, Ventress' defense attorney, Corinne Mull, asked Judge Abbi Taylor to dismiss murder and aggravated assault charges against her client.
"The weapon has never been recovered," she said.
Taylor decided there was enough evidence for probable cause, and Ventress will remain in the DeKalb County jail awaiting a bond hearing in DeKalb County Superior Court.
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