In the early morning hours of Sunday, January 10, 2016, the life of 36-year-old Shalonda Yornell Binns was tragically cut short in her Monticello, Arkansas home. Police were dispatched to 120 South Chester Street around 6:20 AM after receiving a report of a homicide. Inside the residence, they discovered Ms. Binns, who had sustained fatal gunshot wounds.
The investigation would soon reveal a grim and interconnected series of events that unfolded that morning.
Not far from her home, authorities found 37-year-old Jeremiah Jones deceased inside a car, also from apparent gunshot wounds. A third individual, Lavar Thompson of Dermott, was also found at Ms. Binns's residence with a gunshot wound and was transported to a Little Rock hospital for treatment. Initially, Thompson was considered a victim in the violent episode that also left another woman wounded. However, as the investigation by the Monticello Police and the Arkansas State Police Criminal Investigation Division progressed, Thompson was identified as the suspect.
An arrest warrant for Capital Murder was issued for Lavar Thompson, and he was apprehended in Little Rock on January 12, 2016, by the U.S. Marshall Service. Court proceedings later detailed that Thompson, an ex-boyfriend of Binns, had been with Jones and another woman earlier that morning. After a dispute, Thompson shot Jones and the other woman. He then proceeded to Shalonda Binns's home, where he broke in and fatally shot her. Following a trial, Lavar Thompson was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Shalonda Binns and Jeremiah Jones, one count of attempted first-degree murder, and one count of aggravated residential burglary. He received three life sentences plus fifty years to be served consecutively.
