Second arrest made in Mercer player's shooting death

A man wanted in the downtown Macon shooting death of Mercer University basketball player Jibri Bryan was caught Friday evening in DeKalb County after authorities said he ran and hid in a closet.

Damion Deray Henderson, 33, on the run since Bryan's slaying Tuesday afternoon, was arrested about 6:30 p.m. at a Decatur apartment complex near Memorial Drive on Atlanta's east side.

Henderson was at "an associate's apartment," said Deputy John Edgar of the U.S. Marshals Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force, who kicked in two doors there to flush Henderson from hiding.

Edgar said Henderson, who served more than a decade in prison for a 2000 armed robbery and aggravated assault in Clayton County, bolted out the back door of one apartment and, in his socks, raced to a vacant one and ducked into a closet.

"He was tired from running," Edgar said Friday night as he drove a handcuffed Henderson toward Macon and the Bibb County jail, where he was to be held on a felony murder charge. "He looks like he's been up a day or two, like he's not sleeping too well."

A second suspect, Jarvis C. Miller, 24, thought to have been an accomplice in the killing, was arrested soon after the shooting and also charged with felony murder.

For more than three days, authorities had tried to zero in on Henderson, who had friends in west Macon but also had ties to Atlanta and Shreveport, Louisiana.

He was released from prison in August 2013 after serving most of a 12-year sentence for the Clayton County crimes.

Authorities worked around the clock to reel in Henderson before his trail went cold or he fled the state.

A couple of hours before Henderson's arrest, Bibb County Sheriff David Davis told The Telegraph he was confident his investigators and members of Edgar's fugitive squad were closing in.

"He knows he's wanted. He does not know what we know about trying to find him," the sheriff said.

Davis, though he declined to elaborate, added that "the Marshals Service has tools that they can bring to the equation that are very helpful."

Bryan, 23, a graduate student from Savannah and a guard on the Mercer basketball squad, was shot in the head as he sat in the driver's seat of a 2006 Chevrolet Monte Carlo that was backed into a parking space beside a downtown Macon gas mart. He died in the car.

Security cameras at the gas station, a Flash Foods at the corner of Forsyth and College streets, recorded footage of the 4 p.m. slaying, which investigators have said appears to show Henderson firing the shot that killed Bryan.

Video of the incident shows two men ride up in a 2012 Nissan Sentra, a car believed to belong to Henderson's west Macon girlfriend.

When the car wheeled into the Flash Foods lot, it parked near the front of Bryan's car and two men got out.

According to authorities, Miller went to the passenger side of Bryan's car and Henderson stood near Bryan's window on the driver's side.

Soon there was gunfire and Bryan was shot dead, sheriff's officials have said.

As bullets flew -- four or fives shots, according to one bystander -- Miller, the alleged assailant on the passenger side of Bryan's car, was wounded.

Investigators think Miller, who lives on nearby Orange Terrace, was likely shot by Henderson, who they say drove away by himself in the Nissan and ditched it at Miller's apartment.

There was some indication that Miller, at some point, may have been inside Bryan's Monte Carlo. Investigators don't think Bryan was armed.

Authorities said the wounded Miller, shot near his chest, ran off after the shooting but was soon caught and taken to a city hospital. He has been recovering there in recent days and was yet to be jailed.

Why Bryan and the other men were at the store and exactly what transpired in the moments before the slaying was still not known, sources familiar with the case have told The Telegraph.

As of Friday afternoon, investigators had only heard Miller's side of the scenario.

A gun believed to be a .380-caliber pistol was found behind the convenience store, which sits along a bustling thoroughfare half a mile from Mercer's campus.

Investigators haven't divulged the gun's connection to the case.

Deputies also found what Davis has described as a bottled "suspicious substance" and "a wad" of cash on the ground beside Bryan's Monte Carlo.

The as-yet-unknown substance was sent to a crime lab for testing.

To contact writer Joe Kovac Jr., call 744-4397.

This story was originally published February 5, 2016 at 8:48 PM with the headline "Second arrest made in Mercer player's shooting death ."