On the evening of September 10, 2022, Derrick Kentrail Leonard, a 19-year-old Black male from Blytheville, Arkansas, was discovered lying in the roadway in the 1100 block of Links Circle near the Links Apartments in Jonesboro, suffering from a gunshot wound. Police were dispatched after a 911 caller reported a male lying in the road around 7:52 p.m., and responding officers found Leonard critically injured in the street, where the violence had spilled out from the nearby apartment complex into
the roadway.
Officers and emergency medical crews treated Leonard at the scene before rushing him to a local hospital. For a brief time, his life hung in the balance in an operating room as surgeons tried to save him. Despite those efforts, he died during surgery; by the following day, Jonesboro police confirmed that what had begun as a shooting investigation was now officially a homicide case. News of his death filtered through local outlets and memorial pages, where he was listed among those lost to gun violence in Jonesboro on that date.
In the hours and days immediately after the shooting, detectives canvassed the apartment complex and surrounding streets, searching for witnesses and surveillance footage that might explain who had fired the shot that left Leonard in the road. But investigators quickly ran into a wall of silence. According to police, no one at the scene was willing to speak with detectives, and as of mid-September they had not been able to identify even a single person of interest. Faced with a stalled investigation, the Jonesboro Police Department turned to the public, announcing through local media that they were offering a $1,000 reward for information that could help solve Leonard’s killing and urging anyone who knew something to contact Crimestoppers anonymously.
Behind the scenes, though, detectives continued to work the case. Forensic analysis of Leonard’s cell phone became a turning point. Investigators found that he had made calls just before and just after the shooting, and by tracking those communications, along with location data, they were able to narrow down “multiple persons of interest” who were in the immediate area at the time the gunfire erupted. From that pool, they focused on a Jonesboro man, Nickelas N. Brewer. An affidavit described how, based on forensic evidence and witness statements, detectives came to believe Brewer had gone to the Links Apartments in Leonard’s vehicle with the intention of robbing him. Witnesses told investigators that Brewer had spoken explicitly beforehand about planning to rob and shoot Leonard, and police concluded that an attempted robbery appeared to be the motive for the killing.
The investigation eventually stretched beyond Arkansas. In November 2022, officers located Brewer in Arizona, where he was arrested and then extradited back to Arkansas to face charges. Prosecutors filed a first-degree murder charge against him in connection with Leonard’s death, and for a time it appeared the case might be headed toward a full murder trial. But in early 2023, the legal path shifted. Court records and subsequent reporting show that Brewer ultimately pleaded guilty not to murder, but to six counts of breaking or entering tied to a string of vehicle thefts from August 2022. He received a 10-year sentence in the Arkansas Department of Corrections, with credit for time already served, while the first-degree murder charge was dismissed by prosecutors through an order of nolle prosequi, citing that dropping the charge was in the best interest of the parties.
With the murder count against the only publicly identified suspect dismissed, Leonard’s homicide remains without a convicted gunman. Crime and victim memorial websites continue to list his case, noting that he was found in the road on Links Circle that September night and died during surgery, and inviting anyone with information to come forward so that the questions surrounding who ultimately took his life might one day be answered.
