In the early morning hours of January 6, 2018, the life of 20-year-old Davario Kendricks, a male from Nashville, Tennessee, was cut short in a burst of gunfire. Kendricks was inside a car near the intersection of Jefferson Street and 16th Avenue North when the shooting occurred, marking the city's first criminal homicide of the new year.
The investigation into Kendricks' death led Metro Nashville Police to two individuals.
The first, 23-year-old James Moore Jr., was apprehended on the same day as the fatal shooting. Detectives believed Moore was present in the vehicle from which the shots were fired. Almost two months later, a second suspect, 43-year-old Gregory Justice, was arrested. Authorities identified Justice as the alleged gunman who shot and killed Kendricks. Both Moore and Justice were subsequently charged with criminal homicide for their roles in the incident.
In a surprising turn of events, the investigation into Davario Kendricks' own death led to the resolution of another unsolved murder. As news of the arrests in the Kendricks case circulated, the parents of 17-year-old Ja'Donte Hancock Jr., who had been killed in a home invasion in December 2017, recognized Kendricks from media reports as the man who had shot their son. Metro Police later confirmed that Kendricks was the 'gun-wielding robber' responsible for Hancock's death. They stated that Kendricks was a stranger to the Hancock family and that they were working to identify a second person who had accompanied him during that fatal home invasion.
