Javan Cale, a 31-year-old Black man from Dover, Delaware, was fatally shot on the evening of January 10, 2017. At about 7:40 p.m., gunfire erupted inside his home at the Clearfield Apartments, located at 120 Haman Drive. Investigators found Cale on the apartment floor suffering from several wounds to his torso. A silver 9mm Smith & Wesson semiautomatic handgun was near him, and two types of cartridge casings scattered through the scene showed that weapons had been fired from opposing sides.
Witnesses reported seeing two men leave the building after the shooting. Cale was transported to Bayhealth Kent General Hospital, where he died from three gunshot wounds.
The investigation led authorities to DePaul Wilson and Guy Jones Jr., both residents of Worton, Maryland. Wilson appeared at a medical facility in Middletown the following morning with multiple gunshot wounds to his lower body and was transferred to Christiana Hospital in Newark. He left the hospital before Dover detectives arrived, but investigators learned that Jones had brought him there. Police later determined that both suspects had also been struck numerous times during the exchange inside Cale’s apartment and had survived.
When questioned, Wilson and Jones initially claimed that they had traveled with another man, Andre Brown, to Middletown to buy marijuana. Their account later changed: they said they had gone with Brown and Oscar Livingston to Cale’s apartment to make a drug purchase. Both denied planning a robbery, shooting Cale or starting the gunfire. Jones eventually acknowledged that he, Wilson and Brown were present when the shooting occurred and confirmed that Wilson had been wounded that night. Prosecutors ultimately maintained that Wilson and Jones had gone to Cale’s home intending to rob him and that the confrontation began when Cale answered his front door. Cale resisted, and the encounter became a close-range shootout in which all three men were hit.
On January 13, 2017, Dover police publicly announced that Wilson and Jones had been taken into custody by the Kent County Sheriff’s Department in Maryland and were awaiting extradition to Delaware. The initial accusations included first-degree murder, home invasion, first-degree attempted robbery, conspiracy, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony and possession of a firearm by a prohibited person. A later Delaware court record lists February 14, 2017, as the defendants’ arrest date. A grand jury subsequently indicted them on charges arising from the killing and attempted robbery.
A significant pretrial dispute involved a bullet that remained lodged in Wilson’s body. Prosecutors sought a court order requiring him to undergo surgery so the bullet could be recovered and examined. They argued that it might demonstrate that Cale had shot Wilson during the attempted robbery and could help determine whether Wilson or Jones fired the rounds that killed Cale. Wilson opposed the procedure, arguing that the operation was unnecessary and that the state had not supplied adequate medical evidence showing it could be performed safely. The Superior Court refused to compel the surgery.
Wilson and Jones were tried together in Kent County Superior Court. On April 26, 2018, after a trial lasting approximately a week, the jury found both men guilty on every submitted count: first-degree murder, second-degree murder, first-degree attempted robbery, two counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony and second-degree conspiracy. The verdict established that the fatal gunfire occurred during their attempt to rob Cale, even though the evidence reflected that Cale had fired back and wounded both intruders.
On August 24, 2018, the defendants were sentenced for the killing and related offenses. Each received life imprisonment plus an additional 30 years. Jones appealed, contending in part that his trial should have been separated from Wilson’s and that jurors had improperly heard statements referring to his criminal history. The Delaware Supreme Court affirmed his convictions on July 16, 2019. Jones later sought postconviction relief by arguing that his trial attorney had provided ineffective assistance, but the Superior Court denied that motion. The convictions and life sentences therefore remained in place.
