Joeviair Kennedy, a redshirt freshman basketball player for Western Michigan, was charged with murder in connection with the shooting death of another student at an off-campus apartment in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Kennedy, 20, was arraigned Monday and also faces armed robbery and felony gun charges.
Kennedy is accused of fatally shooting Jacob Jones while he and another man, as yet unidentified, robbed the 19-year-old Thursday evening.
Kennedy was taken into custody Friday and wore an orange jumpsuit during his arraignment while answering, “Yes, ma’am,” when asked if he understood the charges against him.
Kennedy was suspended by the school Friday after being identified as a person of interest in the shooting. As of this Monday evening, Kalamazoo police had not yet responded to a request for more information about the alleged second assailant.
On Saturday, men’s basketball Coach Steve Hawkins said, “It’s a devastating loss for our university. It’s a devastating tragedy for everybody involved.”
“Lives were changed forever, and so, we’re very, very respectful of that,” Hawkins said after a win over James Madison. “We’re very shook by the whole thing. Now, it’s up to us to try and – as you always do, trying to mentor young people – you just try and pick up the pieces and move forward. There’s a lot not known. So that’s where we’re at.”
A Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety detective testified at the arraignment (via MLive.com) that witnesses said two men entered the apartment and shot Jones when he stood up from a couch. They then demanded money, phones and marijuana from the other four people there at the time.
According to the detective, one of the people in the apartment tackled one of the robbers, which caused him to drop a pair of phones, one of which was later linked to Kennedy. The WMU athlete also matched a description of one of the robbers, and the detective said that, until Thanksgiving, Kennedy had lived in an apartment building adjacent to where the shooting occurred.
A man who said he was Kennedy’s uncle was also present at the hearing. “I don’t know who did it, but I know he didn’t do it,” Lucious Kennedy, who drove to Kalamazoo from Kentucky for the arraignment, said (via MLive.com). “… I feel bad for the family. But that’s not my nephew.”
Kennedy was a standout basketball and football player at Muskegon High, located about 85 miles northwest of the WMU campus. The 6-4, 190-pound swingman was averaging 7.4 minutes per game for the Broncos.
Jones was a from Onsted, Michigan, who was majoring in exercise science (via wmich.edu). “The WMU community is stunned by the realization that a promising life has been lost,” the school’s president, John Dunn, said in a statement Saturday.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Des Bieler
