Luther D. Hill III, a 43-year-old White/Caucasian man from Morgantown, West Virginia, was killed following a shooting on January 15, 2015. Hill was driving a 1997 Ford Explorer near Solomon’s Village, a residential area off Dorsey Avenue in Morgantown, with his son, Dusty Doman, and another man, Chris Young, inside the vehicle. According to investigators, gunfire was directed at the Explorer, striking Hill as the vehicle and its occupants came under attack. Despite being wounded, Hill was able to drive away from the shooting scene and make it to the Marjorie Gardens apartment complex. Emergency assistance was summoned there, and Hill and other victims were transported for medical treatment. Hill was taken to Ruby Memorial Hospital, where he later died from his injuries.
West Virginia State Police quickly identified Jason Curtis Boyd of Morgantown as the suspected gunman. Boyd was 22 at the time.
Authorities said Boyd fled after the shooting in a vehicle, which investigators subsequently located abandoned in the Sabraton area of Morgantown. Police searched for him into the following day while publicly identifying him as a murder suspect. On January 16, Boyd surrendered to state police and was taken into custody. He was initially charged with murder, malicious wounding and wanton endangerment in connection with the attack on Hill’s vehicle and the people traveling with him. Contemporary reports also noted that Boyd had previous arrests in Morgantown, including obstruction in 2012, domestic battery in 2012 and an armed robbery arrest in November 2014, although those earlier matters were separate from Hill’s killing.
The homicide case ultimately resulted in Boyd facing a first-degree murder charge for Hill’s death. Rather than proceeding through a completed murder trial, Boyd eventually entered guilty pleas to reduced or related charges. In 2016, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, malicious assault and wanton endangerment. The guilty plea established Boyd’s criminal responsibility for firing into the vehicle occupied by Hill, Doman and Young. The malicious-assault and wanton-endangerment counts addressed the violence and danger created for the other occupants during the shooting, while the second-degree murder conviction covered Hill’s death.
On November 29, 2016, Boyd was sentenced to 20 years in prison for second-degree murder. He also received a two-year sentence for malicious assault and a one-year sentence for wanton endangerment, with those additional terms ordered to run concurrently with the murder sentence. Under the sentence reported at the time, Boyd would become eligible for parole after serving 10 years. The resolution therefore brought the case from an initial first-degree murder accusation to a second-degree murder conviction carrying a two-decade prison term.
Boyd later attempted to obtain a modification of that punishment. In 2017, he sought reconsideration of his sentence and requested placement at the Anthony Center, a West Virginia correctional program for youthful offenders. Monongalia County Circuit Judge Philip Gaujot rejected that request, leaving the 20-year murder sentence and concurrent sentences intact. As a result, Hill’s killing did not remain an unsolved homicide: investigators identified Boyd within hours of the shooting, he surrendered the next day, and the prosecution ultimately ended with his guilty plea and conviction for second-degree murder along with the additional assault and endangerment offenses.
