Brian Jason DeBoard, a 33-year-old White/Caucasian man from Indore, West Virginia, was killed during a violent confrontation at his Clay County residence on the evening of July 15, 2015. DeBoard worked for the West Virginia Division of Corrections as a supervisor at the Mount Olive Correctional Complex. He shared the residence with his cousin, Zachary Daniels, and what began as a dispute between the two men escalated into a physical fight that ended with DeBoard being fatally shot.
West Virginia State Police investigators said a 9mm semiautomatic handgun was involved in the confrontation. Early accounts differed slightly over exactly how Daniels came to possess the weapon. One report said Daniels pulled the handgun on DeBoard during the dispute, while an Associated Press account of the preliminary State Police investigation said the cousins were fighting when Daniels gained control of DeBoard's handgun.
What was consistent across the reporting was that Daniels then shot DeBoard, inflicting fatal injuries. DeBoard died at the scene. Police subsequently recovered the handgun believed to have been used in the shooting, and the West Virginia State Police Troop 4 Crime Scene Team assisted investigators in processing the residence and gathering evidence.
Authorities quickly identified Daniels as the suspect. Daniels, who was 26 at the time and was both DeBoard's cousin and housemate, was arrested following the shooting and charged with first-degree murder. He was taken to the Central Regional Jail and was initially being held without bond. The first-degree murder charge reflected investigators' initial conclusion that DeBoard's death resulted from an intentional criminal shooting, although the publicly available contemporaneous reports described the investigation as preliminary and did not provide a detailed account of what caused the argument or what occurred immediately before the physical struggle.
DeBoard's death also represented the loss of a longtime member of the corrections community. West Virginia Division of Corrections records later included him among Mount Olive Correctional Complex employees remembered by the agency, and earlier departmental material showed that he had received a Certificate of Commendation while working at the facility. Outside his work, DeBoard was the son of Mitch and Peggy Williams DeBoard and the father of a son, Jordon Alexander DeBoard. He was also survived by two brothers and a sister. Funeral services were held later that month in Clay, with burial at Sunset Cemetery in Bickmore.
The online reporting located for the case clearly documents Daniels' arrest and the first-degree murder charge, but it does not establish a later trial verdict, guilty plea, conviction, acquittal, dismissal, or sentence. As a result, the documented public record available through these sources supports identifying Zachary Daniels as the person arrested and accused in DeBoard's killing, but a later criminal-court disposition should not be stated without additional court records or reliable reporting confirming what ultimately happened to the charge.
