Joshua Demetrius Crooks Jr., an 18-year-old Black male, died on February 23, 2022, in Raeford, North Carolina, after violence broke out in the 2600 block of Lindsay Road near Little Rock Drive. Deputies were called to the scene and found Joshua dead, while an 18-year-old woman was also shot and seriously hurt and taken for treatment. Public reports and his obituary sketch the outline of a young man whose life had already begun to take shape before it was suddenly cut off: he was born in
Hinesville, Georgia, later called Spring Lake home, graduated from Pine Forest High School with honors, participated in Future Business Leaders of America, and was remembered as an ambitious young entrepreneur.
In the early aftermath, the case appears to have unfolded slowly and in pieces rather than all at once. The killing was investigated by the Hoke County Sheriff’s Office, and as the months passed, authorities began naming people they believed were tied to what happened on Lindsay Road. One of the first publicly reported arrests was Nyana Finesse Lilly, identified in coverage as 18 at the time, who was charged with first-degree murder in connection with the shooting. Reports tied her arrest directly to the same incident that left Joshua dead and the female survivor wounded.
The investigation did not end there. Later reporting from the U.S. Marshals and regional news outlets identified another suspect as Antwon Jamal Davis of Fayetteville, who was arrested in St. Albans, West Virginia. Authorities said Davis was wanted in Hoke County for first-degree murder and other offenses connected to the same February 23, 2022 shooting, including robbery-related charges, conspiracy, and assault-related allegations. Reports on his arrest said he was taken into custody while awaiting extradition back to North Carolina, suggesting investigators believed the killing was part of a broader violent encounter rather than a single isolated act.
Then, in March 2023, the sheriff’s office announced yet another arrest: a juvenile was taken into custody and charged with first-degree murder, two counts of robbery with a dangerous weapon, conspiracy to commit robbery with a dangerous weapon, and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury. That development gave the case an even more layered and troubling shape, with authorities publicly indicating that more than one person had been accused in Joshua’s death and the wounding of the surviving victim. The juvenile’s name was not released, and public reporting available online does not clearly show a final trial result or conviction for the defendants in the case. What does emerge from the reporting is a portrait of a young man whose death remained an active and expanding homicide investigation long after the night he was killed, with multiple suspects eventually swept into the case as detectives continued to build it.
