On the night of December 27, 2018, Devontay Roscoe, a 24-year-old Black man, was at his family’s home in Augusta, Georgia, when violence came to the front door. Reports said the shooting happened around 9:30 p.m., turning what should have been an ordinary winter evening into a scene of panic and grief. Roscoe was shot at least once, and the chaos of those first moments gave way to the terrible realization that his wounds were fatal.
In the aftermath, his death left family members and the wider Augusta community facing the kind of shock that settles in slowly, then stays.
Early coverage described the killing as a shooting at or near the entrance of the home, with the coroner identifying Roscoe and confirming the circumstances of his death. The details that emerged publicly painted a picture of a sudden, targeted burst of gunfire rather than a random accident. His funeral arrangements were announced soon after, with services held in early January 2019, a somber marker of how quickly his life had been cut short.
As the investigation moved forward, authorities identified Rodriguez Sanchaz Daggett as a suspect in the case. Publicly available arrest records show Daggett was arrested on April 30, 2019, and charged with murder and a weapon offense in connection with Roscoe’s killing. That arrest came months after the shooting, suggesting investigators had continued building the case well beyond the first wave of public reporting. The naming of a suspect gave the case a face and a direction, but it did not erase the long silence and uncertainty that had followed the shooting itself.
Later public reporting indicated that Daggett’s case advanced to trial in Richmond County Superior Court. The case, at least from what was publicly reported online, did not end with the simple closure families often hope for when an arrest is made. Instead, it became another reminder that an arrest is only one chapter in a much longer story, and that the search for justice can be complicated, contested, and painful. What remains constant through every version of the public record is the loss at the center of it: Devontay Roscoe was killed in Augusta at just 24 years old, and the memory of that night still hangs over the case.
