Police revived homicide charges against a York City man accused of helping gun down another man in a broad daylight shooting two years ago.
The new case against Antonio Jones, 24, was filed in late July, nearly 10 months after a judge dismissed the original charges over a lack of firm evidence identifying him as a shooter.
“The identification … could have identified any number of Black males in York County,” Judge Maria Musti Cook wrote in her opinion dismissing the case without prejudice.
The “without prejudice” term is key since it left the door open for law enforcement to investigate and charge Jones again, as they now have.
He’s jailed once more at York County Prison without bail, facing homicide and conspiracy counts in the new case. Court documents indicate he was transferred from a state prison while he currently serves a sentence for his role in another homicide in 2018.
Jones was originally charged with two other men, Rashad Colon and Jaquez Brown, as three of four masked men who ambushed and killed 27-year-old Shaheim Carr in the 300 block of West Philadelphia Street late in the morning of July 6, 2022.
Investigators estimated three of the men charged from a car and fired nearly 100 bullets with guns that had extended magazines. The fourth allegedly stayed at the car while firing.
Charging documents in the renewed case against Jones include several notable new details.
Investigators for the first time identified who they suspect was the fourth shooter, a young man named Furman Dennis. Though court records indicate he’s not currently charged in the case.
Data was pulled from Rashad Colon’s phone in June, adding to phone data investigators initially gathered as evidence. An FBI team and Pennsylvania State Police investigator helped analyze phone data.
A detective was asked to analyze the case as a gang expert in June. He identified Jones and Dennis as two of the suspects after reviewing security video from the scene.
That identification, though, differs from the original allegations that described the clothes police believed Jones and Colon wore at the scene and where they sat in the car.
Police also said Carr was killed amid an ongoing conflict between rival gangs, and that he was one of several people who died in recent fighting.
The acknowledgment furthered an admission West Manchester Township police and the district attorney’s office first made last December while announcing charges in another homicide.
In that case, investigators said Carr, as an allegedly key member of the Parkway gang, paid two men a bounty for shooting and killing Devin Zeigler, an alleged member of rival East/South Side, in May 2022. That shooting went down at a car wash two months before Carr’s death.
Jones, Dennis, Brown, Colon and another man were identified in the new charging documents as members of the East/South Side gang.
Jones’ attorney, Michael Diamondstein, argued police still don’t have enough evidence against him.
“We have reviewed the Commonwealth’s newest complaint and believe what the Honorable Maria Musti Cook found as a matter of law: There is not enough evidence to tie Mr. Jones to 9/13/24, 10:56 AM York City gang war, multiple deaths cited in refiled homicide charge the instant homicide,” Diamondstein said.
July 6, 2022: Shortly after 11 a.m., Carr left a house at 340 W. Philadelphia St. and reached the sidewalk. Four men piled out of a reportedly stolen Ford Fusion across the street and began opening fire, police alleged, citing security camera videos from the scene.
Three of the men advanced on Carr and chased him into a nearby breezeway. The driver stayed with the Ford, police said.
Carr died from multiple gunshot wounds in the breezeway. The gunmen fled back to the Ford and drove off.
Investigators said they used video to track the Ford to Spring Garden Township, where they alleged Brown was dropped off and seen walking to a house in the 600 block of Wheatlyn Drive.
Brown was arrested a few days later, the first suspect charged in the case. He was described as sitting in the rear driver’s side seat and allegedly wearing an Adidas-style tracksuit.
Jones and Colon were charged in April 2023, nine months after the shooting.
The original charging documents showed investigators believed Jones sat next to Brown in the back seat, wearing a gray hooded sweatsuit, a black face mask and a blue glove.
Colon, they initially believed, sat in the front passenger seat and wore dark pants, dark Puma sneakers, a black sweatshirt and a black Nike facemask.
The driver wasn’t identified.
Now, after the one detective’s gang analysis, police believe Colon drove the Ford. Jones allegedly sat next to him, now identified as the one wearing the Puma sneakers, black sweatshirt and Nike facemask.
Dennis allegedly sat next to Brown in the back with the gray sweatsuit and blue glove. Police alleged he fired a gun with an extended magazine.
He also had a tattoo on the same hand that wore the glove, and that he was seen in other photos wearing similar shoes and sweatshirt as those from the scene, according to the charging documents.
The new analysis of Colon’s phone also allegedly pointed to him as the driver. Police said the data showed it moved about seven steps at the approximate time of the shooting. They argued the steps are consistent with the number of steps the drive took in the video.
After the shooting, police alleged Brown met up with Jones, Colon and another man at a local hotel.
They then drove around together for a couple of hours, listening to music, and with Jones recording video with his phone. Their route took them back toward the homicide scene, police alleged in charging documents.
The group allegedly returned to the hotel around 3:20 p.m., with Brown reserving a room, police said. Dennis allegedly met up with them there later.
Police, meanwhile, found the Ford abandoned in Springettsbury Township around midnight after the shooting. A search indicated it had been wiped clean to destroy evidence. But investigators were able to pull the car’s digital infotainment center.
Jones’ iPhone had connected to the device through Bluetooth earlier in the day, police alleged.
An FBI team and a state police trooper analyzed phone and location data records from Jones, Colon, Dennis, Brown and another man’s phones, police alleged in charging documents.
The data mapping, they said, placed Jones in the area of the scene around the time Carr was shot, and that his phone locations corresponded with Brown and Colon’s locations that day, according to charging documents.
After Jones was originally charged in 2023 — first with homicide, then with first-degree murder after the case reached the county common pleas level — his attorney, Diamondstein, challenged the identification of him as one of the masked men on the video from the scene as well as the mobile phone evidence.
Judge Musti Cook agreed last October that the evidence identifying Jones was circumstantial and didn’t “rise above a level of speculation and conjecture.”
She ordered the charge dismissed without prejudice.
Colon and Brown also challenged evidence in their cases, but those challenges were denied. They both remain charged with first-degree murder in Carr’s death.
A hearing on another motion in Brown’s case is scheduled for Sept. 16, court documents show.
The new homicide and conspiracy charges against Jones were filed July 29 in Judge Joel Toluba’s district court. A preliminary hearing on the renewed allegations is scheduled for Oct. 2, documents show.
2018 homicide and other cases: Jones was charged again a little more than a month after he and another man, Tyler Orr, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder charges in a separate case.
The two admitted to the shooting death of 20-year-old Phillip Banks Jr. along North Franklin Street in York City in May 2018.
They were both sentenced to 21⁄2 to 5 years in state prison in that case.
Orr had also pleaded guilty in a separate firearms case, which added to his time.
Jones, meanwhile, in addition to the two homicide cases, is also charged in a separate drug and firearms case along with Colon, Dennis and two other people.
Another drug case against Jones from 2021 is still active as well, according to court documents.
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— Reach Aimee Ambrose at aambrose@yorkdispatch.com or on Twitter at @aimee_TYD.
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