Breon Williams, a 27-year-old Black man, was killed in Battle Creek, Michigan, in the early hours of August 9, 2015, after a passing car rolled into the Park Hill neighborhood and gunfire shattered the night. He was outside near the intersection of Hanover Street and Walters Avenue, close enough to the street that the shooter didn’t have to leave the vehicle to reach him.
In the hours leading up to the killing, the conflict had already been set in motion.
The night before, a group that included Jermaine Leon Jones, Dezmen Roshea Jones, Jlin Cannon, and Kyle Epps went out to a local nightclub. There, Jermaine Jones had a short, unfriendly encounter with Williams, tense enough that Epps felt uncomfortable and left. What might have ended as a bitter exchange instead followed them into the early morning, where anger hardened into a plan.
According to later court testimony, Jermaine Jones pushed the group to keep looking for Williams after they left the club. He persuaded Epps to let them borrow Epps’s tan Pontiac Bonneville so they could search without being recognized, saying he had a gun and suggesting violence was preferable to letting the situation turn against “one of his family members.” With Cannon driving, the four men cruised through Park Hill, circling the streets, then sitting in the car for roughly ten to the fifteen minutes when they came up empty. During that lull, Jermaine Jones voiced a chilling fallback: if they couldn’t find Williams, they would find someone close to him.
Eventually, they spotted Williams near the sidewalk, leaning toward a car and speaking through the passenger-side window. Cannon pulled up close. From the rear passenger side of the Bonneville, shots erupted—five or six in quick succession. Williams was struck once in the chest, a single wound that proved fatal. The car sped away, and the gun used in the attack was never recovered.
The investigation moved quickly. Witnesses described what they had seen and helped identify the vehicle, and police followed that trail to arrests. On August 21, 2015, Battle Creek police announced that three male suspects—ages 20, 22, and 23—had been arrested in connection with the drive-by shooting and were expected to be formally charged later that day.
As the case made its way through court, prosecutors focused on Jermaine Jones and his nephew, Dezmen Jones. At trial, witnesses described Jermaine Jones as the one who helped plan and drive the search that ended in Williams’s death, while Dezmen Jones was identified as the shooter. Jermaine Jones was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder, with the prosecution’s theory casting him as an aider and abettor who encouraged and assisted the killing even if he didn’t fire the fatal shot. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Dezmen Jones’s path to conviction took longer. His first murder trial ended in a mistrial, but a second jury later convicted him of first-degree murder along with weapons offenses, including felony-firearm counts. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder, with additional prison terms imposed for the related weapons convictions.
