Damarest Dante Jackson, a 22-year-old man, was discovered on the morning of December 31, 2017, lying unresponsive in the roadway on the 5600 block of Coley Road, near the intersection of Coley and Pincushion Roads in the Columbia area of Richland County, South Carolina. A passerby came upon him in the road and called 911, pulling deputies and the coroner into a scene that felt both sudden and strangely suspended in time—because even at the outset, authorities said it was not immediately clear
exactly when the fatal shooting had happened.
Richland County Coroner Gary Watts identified Jackson and reported that he died from a gunshot wound to the upper body. Investigators said the wound had been inflicted sometime in December, suggesting Jackson had been shot earlier and only later left—or left to be found—on Coley Road as the year was ending. The uncertainty about timing cast a shadow over those first hours: the body was there, the injury was clear, but the sequence that brought him to that stretch of road had to be rebuilt piece by piece.
As deputies worked the case, they concluded the killing was tied to drugs and that Jackson knew the people who would soon be accused of taking his life. Authorities said Jackson and the suspects were acquaintances, and the dispute that turned deadly was described as being “over drugs,” reframing the roadside discovery into something more intimate and volatile than a random act—an encounter among people who already had each other’s names and histories.
Arrests followed in January 2018. The Richland County Sheriff’s Department Fugitive Task Force, working with the U.S. Marshals, arrested Robert Gibson, 36, on January 20; he was charged with murder and possession of marijuana. Days later, on January 23, deputies arrested Jhordan Clarke, 21, charging him with murder along with multiple additional counts: two counts of possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine, four counts of possession with intent to distribute flunitrazepam unlawful carry of a pistol, driving under suspension, and two counts of manufacturing and distributing cocaine. Authorities reported both men were taken to the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center as the case moved from a grim roadside mystery into the formal machinery of prosecution.
