Derrick Carlisle, a 27-year-old Black man from Moreno Valley, was an employee of the California Department of Motor Vehicles and a devoted father to two young daughters. He was also survived by his fiancé.
In the early hours of August 17, 2019, Carlisle was a customer at a hookah bar in Riverside, California, near the intersection of University and Iowa avenues. Authorities stated that two men confronted him inside the establishment and shot him in the upper body.
The attack was described as unprovoked, and robbery was not a motive. Around 3:15 a.m., Riverside police officers found Carlisle wounded in a nearby parking structure on the 1400 block of University Avenue. He was pronounced dead at the scene before he could be taken to a hospital.
The Riverside Police Department led a complex, yearlong investigation that identified two suspects. The effort was a collaboration between multiple agencies, including the Riverside and San Bernardino County sheriff’s departments and the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office. On August 13, 2020, a police tactical team arrested Dontay Dwayne Davis at his home in Corona. On September 12, 2020, the second suspect, Andrew Lewis Jones of San Jacinto, was tracked to Scottsdale, Arizona, where he was apprehended by a U.S. Marshals Task Force and later extradited to California.
Both Davis and Jones were charged in the killing. Following a preliminary hearing, a Riverside County Superior Court judge ruled in July 2022 that there was sufficient evidence for both men to stand trial. The charges include first-degree murder with a special circumstance allegation of lying in wait, as well as sentence-enhancing gun and great bodily injury allegations. As of July 2022, both defendants were being held without bail while awaiting further court proceedings.
