Jon W. Alston, 42, a man from Chesterfield County, vanished in mid-January 2018 in a way that left his family grasping for an explanation. According to accounts tied to the missing-person report, he had gone with his wife to the Hancock Village Walmart parking lot, and in the ordinary span of a shopping trip he was suddenly gone—leaving behind a last-seen moment that felt too mundane for what it would become.
As the days stretched on, his disappearance drew attention beyond a routine missing-person case. Reports described him as a self-proclaimed Richmond pastor, but also said he was listed as a fugitive on a cocaine-distribution matter and was believed by “Crime Insider” sources to be entangled in violence on the city’s Southside. A search off Mimosa Street near Jefferson Davis Highway was mentioned as turning up nothing, the kind of empty result that only deepened the dread that something irreversible had already happened.
Before dawn on March 6, 2018, the story turned grim along the 2100 block of Lumkin Avenue in South Richmond. A work crew clearing brush along power lines that run beside the roadway discovered a body in the wooded area and reported what they found. Police were called at about 6:36 a.m., and the case opened as a death investigation, with the Medical Examiner tasked with determining the exact cause and manner of death.
By the next day, Richmond police publicly identified the man found off Lumkin Avenue as Alston. Investigators said he had been reported missing out of Chesterfield County, and they noted that Richmond detectives already knew him as a suspect in a separate homicide: the January 7, 2018 murder of Garry Harrison, Jr. on Warwick Avenue. Then came the first clear step toward accountability in Alston’s own death—detectives charged Harry E. Braxton, III, 26, with conspiracy to commit murder in Alston’s homicide, adding that additional charges were being considered.
In the same announcement, detectives described the cases as connected and laid out arrests in the Warwick Avenue homicide as well. Crystal R. Braxton, Jaqwail V. Braxton, and Calvin C. Cooper were charged with first degree murder, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony and aggravated malicious wounding; Cooper and Jaqwail Braxton also faced charges for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. A fourth person, Joleal E. Burno, was charged with conspiracy to commit murder. In the wake of these charges, police continued to ask for information, pointing the public to the major-crimes detective assigned to the investigations.
