Jesse James Loya, a 36-year-old White/Caucasian man, was killed during an early-morning shooting inside a residence on Montrose Avenue in Morgantown, West Virginia, on March 31, 2016. At approximately 4:21 a.m., Morgantown police officers were dispatched to 1248 Montrose Avenue after receiving a report of shots fired. When officers entered the residence, they found Loya lying on the floor suffering from a gunshot wound. He was pronounced dead at the scene. A second victim, Kyle A.
Brown, had been shot in the hand and was transported to Ruby Memorial Hospital for treatment. Initial information given to investigators described two male suspects dressed in dark clothing who had fled after the shooting.
Investigators determined that the shooting occurred during what authorities described as a home invasion. Two men were accused of forcing their way into the residence and opening fire before leaving the scene. The circumstances of the prosecution indicate that investigators regarded the intrusion as connected to an attempted or completed armed robbery, although publicly available reports do not provide a detailed account of what the intruders intended to take or whether property was actually removed from the residence. The second victim survived his wound, leaving detectives with a living witness as the investigation moved quickly toward identifying the two suspected intruders.
The first arrest came only two days after the killing. On April 2, 2016, Jeremiah Martin of Morgantown was taken into custody without incident following a traffic stop in Fairmont. His apprehension involved members of the U.S. Marshals Service Mountain State Fugitive Task Force, the Fairmont Police Department and the Morgantown Police Department. Martin was initially charged with armed robbery and conspiracy to commit armed robbery and was confined in the North Central Regional Jail while detectives continued building the homicide case. On April 9, authorities added a charge of first-degree murder against Martin.
Police also identified Benjamin Louis Bradley of Westover as the second suspect. Bradley was arrested without incident on April 8 and arraigned the following day. He initially faced armed robbery and conspiracy to commit armed robbery charges and was held in the North Central Regional Jail on a $75,000 bond. As the case proceeded through Monongalia County Circuit Court, Bradley was also indicted on first-degree murder and robbery charges in connection with the fatal home invasion.
The prosecution ultimately established Jeremiah Martin as the person responsible for shooting Loya. In June 2017, Martin pleaded guilty to first-degree murder rather than taking the case through a murder trial. He received a life sentence with mercy. Under that sentence, Martin became eligible to seek parole after serving 15 years, although eligibility does not guarantee release. His guilty plea resolved the central murder charge and formally held him criminally responsible for the fatal shooting.
Bradley's case followed a different course. On September 20, 2017, he entered pleas to the lesser offenses of burglary and conspiracy. He had originally faced the far more serious first-degree murder and robbery charges, but those charges were to be dismissed as part of the disposition once the court accepted the negotiated pleas. Bradley was subsequently sentenced to a term of two to twenty years to be served on home confinement. In 2018, he sought parole, arguing through his attorney that he was not a danger to the community and had maintained full-time employment. The state opposed his request, and the Monongalia County court upheld the home-confinement sentence.
The case therefore ended with criminal responsibility imposed on both identified participants, but in substantially different ways. Martin admitted to first-degree murder and received life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after the statutory minimum period, while Bradley's murder exposure was resolved through guilty pleas to burglary and conspiracy and a significantly lesser sentence. What began as a predawn report of gunfire at a Morgantown residence developed within days into arrests of both suspected intruders and eventually into guilty pleas that established Martin as the shooter and Bradley as a participant in the home invasion surrounding Loya's death.
