Jamia Lashay Hill, a 25-year-old African American woman, was found fatally shot inside her car on the night of June 10, 2019, in Lumberton, North Carolina. Police were dispatched around 10 p.m. to the 500 block of East 10th Street after a report of a person shot. When officers arrived, they discovered Ms. Hill's body in her white vehicle, which was stopped in the street near a light. No one else was at the scene.
An autopsy was ordered to confirm the cause of her death.
The Lumberton Police Department, assisted by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, launched a homicide investigation. Detectives appealed to the public for any information that could help them understand what happened to Ms. Hill, who lived on Swan Drive in Lumberton.
Eight days after Ms. Hill's death, authorities announced they had identified a suspect. On June 18, 2019, the Lumberton Police Department issued a warrant for the arrest of Jasmine Charnelle McLaurin, a 27-year-old woman from Lumberton, on a charge of first-degree murder. Police released a physical description of McLaurin and asked for the public's help in locating her.
The search for McLaurin ended a few weeks later and hundreds of miles away. On July 5, 2019, she was arrested by the Frisco Police Department in Collin County, Texas. As of July 2019, McLaurin was being held in the Collin County Jail, pending extradition to Robeson County, North Carolina, to face the murder charge in the death of Jamia Hill.
