Columbus teen killed Thursday was released from jail in March, involved in 2014 death

Columbus’ latest homicide victim was just released from jail this past February after pleading guilty to charges related to another fatal shooting.

Police were called around 2:30 a.m. Thursday to reports of someone shot at 1919 Dunwoody Drive, where they found Jaquan Jermaine “Droopy” Harris with a gunshot wound. He was rushed to Piedmont Columbus Regional’s midtown campus, where he was pronounced dead at 3:15 a.m., said Coroner Buddy Bryan. Harris was 19.

Investigators said they had a warrant charging Harris with being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. The warrant was issued Nov. 25, police said.

Harris pleaded guilty to aggravated assault Feb. 26, when Muscogee Superior Court Judge Ron Mullins sentenced him to 10 years’ probation.

He was one of two teens charged in the Aug. 21, 2014, fatal shooting of 16-year-old Christopher Jones, found dead in a wrecked car on Winston Road.

Harris, who was 14 at the time, was in the stolen car with Jones and Jamal Jaquell “Lil’ Boosy” Scott, 15, when they went looking for a man named Terrance Streeter, who an hour earlier had snatched a gun from the teens when they tried to sell it to him.

Humiliated, the boys vowed to make Streeter pay.

So with Jones driving, they returned to the Winston Road area where they’d met Streeter earlier, and called him out to the street, using his nickname, “Worm.”

Jones had a .380-caliber pistol. Scott was in the front passenger’s seat with a 25-caliber handgun, and Harris was in the back seat with a semi-automatic rifle that had an extended clip of 38 rounds, investigators said.

When Streeter came out armed with the Glock .40-caliber pistol he earlier had snatched from the boys who stole it in a car break-in, Scott opened fire, but Harris couldn’t work the rifle. Streeter drew the Glock and shot back as Jones tried to speed away.

He did not get far.

A bullet went through the rear of the car and hit him in the head. The stolen Hyundai Sonata crossed Head Street and wrecked in a ditch, crashing into a tree, a fence and a fire hydrant.

Scott and Harris got out and ran. Streeter fled, too.

Police called to a report of “shots fired” found the car engine running, the fire hydrant spewing water, and the rifle on the ground outside the passenger’s side door. Behind the wheel was a dead or dying teenager, his right arm still moving, the stolen .380 pistol two feet from his hand.

Later identified as Jones, he was pronounced dead at 10:40 p.m.

Scott and Harris later returned to the scene with their parents, and told police they were just driving by a “party house” when someone started shooting at them. A party house is a home being used like an unlicensed bar.

Initially no one inside the 1055 Winston Road house Streeter had walked from said they saw what happened, but eventually two witnesses admitted seeing Streeter sitting on the front porch, before the shooting.

Authorities decided that since the boys shot first, Streeter fired in self-defense, so he could not be charged with murder, under Georgia law. He pleaded guilty Feb. 8 to robbery by snatching and was sentenced to 10 years’ probation with 60 months to serve.

Because the boys’ plot to shoot Streeter got Jones killed while they were committing aggravated assault, a felony, they at first were charged with felony murder. Attorneys in a plea negotiation later agreed that each would plead to aggravated assault, and be released.

Jones’ mother Myisha Jones later told the Ledger-Enquirer that each of her son’s friends had faced up to 20 years in prison for aggravated assault, and 30 for felony murder. She didn’t want them to go to prison: Losing one child was enough, she said.

“I had to put my feelings and my anger aside to realize that my baby’s life was enough,” she said. “It had to stop there. That was enough, because putting them away for the rest of their lives, they’re not going to learn from that.”

This story was originally published December 27, 2018 at 6:23 PM.