Robert Willis, 28, a male from North Ridgeville, drove to Lorain on the evening of July 29, 2025, for what investigators say began as a planned drug deal and turned into a robbery. Around 9 p.m., shots cracked across the parking lot of the Little Lighthouse Learning Center at 1715 Meister Road. Wounded behind the wheel, Robert Willis pressed the accelerator and the car lurched forward, rolling down the street until it struck a fence and a shed. Deputies found him and rushed him to Mercy Health Lorain, where he died of his injuries.
Detectives pieced together the minutes before the gunfire from video and witness leads. According to Sheriff Jack Hall, a. 380-caliber handgun was used, and video evidence suggested the gunman brandished the weapon as Robert Willis tried to drive away. In the car, investigators later found the $110 that was supposed to change hands—money that, they said, the would-be robber never got. The scene told a tight, grim story: headlights cutting across asphalt, the brief burst of violence, and a vehicle coasting to its final stop with no one left to help its driver.
Less than a month later, the Lorain County Sheriff's Office announced an arrest. On August 25, 2025, a county SWAT team and detectives took 21-year-old Jomar Perez of Lorain into custody and booked him on a first-degree murder charge under Ohio Revised Code 2903.02. Authorities searched his Lorain apartment the same day. Perez appeared in Lorain Municipal Court, where he pleaded not guilty; records cited by local reporting placed his bond in the multimillion-dollar range as the case moved forward.
As grand jurors reviewed the case, investigators' narrative hardened into a broader charging picture. A Lorain County grand jury indicted Jomar Perez on multiple counts—including two counts of murder, aggravated robbery, felonious assault, and related firearm specifications—describing the killing of Robert Willis, 28, in Lorain as the result of a botched robbery on Meister Road. The panel also indicted a second man, 23-year-old Jacob T. Smith of Grafton, on complicity charges tied to murder, aggravated robbery, felonious assault, robbery, and possessing weapons under disability. With indictments filed, the case shifted from an urgent manhunt to a courtroom battle over what happened in that parking lot and why.
In the days after the arrest, local outlets echoed the Sheriff's account, reporting that deputies built their case from early leads that drove the search and arrest warrants, and that the killing of Robert Willis, 28, was rooted in an attempted robbery during a drug transaction. The Sheriff's Office scheduled a press briefing to lay out the investigation's arc, underscoring how swiftly the July night's chaos gave way to August's charges and, eventually, the grand jury's bill.
