Police arrested a former Miami Hurricanes football player on Thursday in connection with the November 2006 shooting death of teammate Bryan Pota. The arrest comes almost 15 years after the crime and nine months after an investigation ESPN pointed out missteps during the police investigation which, moreover, was stopped for a long time.
The Miami-Dade Police Department said U.S. sheriffs arrested Rashaun Jones, 35, on a first-degree murder charge. In a video posted on Twitter, Detective Juan Segovia thanked the Pota family and the community for keeping up the pressure to solve the case.
“The community never stopped contacting me,” Segovia said. “Even if we got a thousand data and only one was what really put the pieces together, that was what was needed, and that’s exactly what happened in this case.
“I can only hope that this will give the Pota family some satisfaction and allow them to close the circle.”
Jones was arrested in Ocala, Florida, on a homicide warrant obtained Tuesday from Miami-Dade police, according to a statement from the U.S. Bailiffs Service.
He was arrested in Marion County, about 70 miles west of Orlando, and is awaiting transfer to Miami-Dade. It was not immediately clear if Jones has a lawyer who can comment on his case.
“It’s really a surprise,” he told ESPN former Hurricanes coach Larry Coker. “I’m glad things are moving forward and being resolved.”
Several of Miami’s former Pota teammates had opposing reactions to the news of Jones’ arrest. Chris Zellner he told ESPN through a text message that he is “happy to have caught Bryan’s killer,” but also “sad” that the suspect is “someone on our team.” Kyle Wright, In a text message to ESPN, He said he is “shocked and heartbroken” while Willie Williams he described “tears of relief and joy.”
In a brief telephone conversation in April 2019, meanwhile ESPN investigating the case, Jones said he knew the police and even some ex-partners suspected he had killed Pota, but denied being involved.
“What happened 12 years ago, happened 12 years ago,” he said at the time. “It has nothing to do with me. I didn’t.”
Last year, Jones’ wife, Ishenda Jones, wrote in a text message to ESPN that “(Rashaun’s) comment was that he was innocent. He did NOT kill Bryan. Miami-Dade found no evidence against my husband.”
The arrest came a week after what would have been Pota’s 37th birthday. On November 7, 2006, someone shot Pota in the head as he got out of his van in front of his apartment complex, six miles from Miami campus. It was about 7pm and Pota had just returned from afternoon practice; he was months away from being selected, probably in the NFL Draft.
Jones has long been suspected of the murder that took place 15 years ago, a fact revealed last November in the report of ESPN who traced the police investigation and described various theories, as well as the doubts of the Pota family about the commitment and ability of the police to solve the case.
Police said publicly for years that he had no suspects, but during court proceedings last summer, in a battle with ESPN by public records, an officer overseeing the investigation said police “had a strong belief about who had killed Bryan Pota” and was about to arrest that person at least a decade earlier.
Jones and Pota had a history of discussions and fights, and Jones had previously dated Pota’s girlfriend, Jada Brody, according to interviews and documents obtained by ESPN. Brody cooperated with police at the time of the shooting, but expressed his irritation when police returned to ask questions months later, according to police records. Records do not show her saying anything about Jones’ possible involvement. Before publishing its 2020 story, ESPN he approached Brody for more than two years by phone, text message, social media, and through friends and family. She never agreed to an interview.
In interviews with ESPNPolice theorized that the shooter had been waiting for Pota, possibly in the bushes or behind a trash can. Police have not found anyone who has seen the shooting and no security camera in the area caught it. Some people interviewed at the apartment complex reported hearing voices in a loud tone, while others heard gunshots, according to police.
In a 2019 interview, Lt. Rudy Gonzalez told ESPN that police interviewed a resident who said he was walking in the parking lot the night of the murder when he saw a man running out of the scene. The resident gave police a sufficient description to generate a sketch, and records indicate that a resemblance was shown to an unidentified person. But police have refused to publish the sketch or say if it matches any possible suspect.
In March 2020, ESPN suing Miami-Dade for withholding and drafting records of the case, which the chain argued should be made public because the case was no longer active. But police disagreed and promised a renewed effort.
Lieutenant Joseph Zanconato, who was later separated from the homicide unit, told the judge that police only needed “one piece of the puzzle” to close the case. When asked if the department would make an arrest “in the foreseeable future,” Zanconato replied, “Yes.”
Police interviewed dozens of people and generated more than 4,000 pages in the record regarding nightclub fights, stolen tires, jealous brides, federal agents and even an alleged confession in prison. But the notes and material belonging to Jones occupied a prominent place.
Police had interviewed and / or conducted background checks on more than 100 people. Each of his files had a cover before the information. The cover of Jones’ file in the case report is the only one that points to the subject as “suspicious.” The sentences highlighted in the middle of a page that had other details about Jones were said to refer to “our main person of interest,” according to court testimony.
In an interview with ESPN, A former teammate recalled a fight between Jones and Pota. According to this account, Jones issued a warning when the two were separated: “Wow, you better go ahead and take precautions.”
Documents and interviews indicate that on the night of the murder, Jones was remarkably absent from a mandatory team meeting convened by coaches. He had been suspended that day after testing positive for marijuana, his third failed control.
Jones would later tell police he was home alone the night Pota was killed, and that when Pota learned of his death, he headed to the Hecht Athletic Center, presumably for the meeting. But other witnesses told police, and more than a dozen former players told him ESPN that they did not remember Jones being there. Police noted in their report that Jones had given a false alibi.
ESPN he reviewed police notes indicating that Jones called a fellow Miami athlete to borrow money that night to get out of town. Police later interviewed the athlete, who he spoke with ESPN on the condition that he not be identified and confirmed that Jones did ask him for money; he declined to comment further. Coral Gables police chief Ed Hudak, a police liaison at the time for the football team, said that while speaking to players at the football facility on the night of Nov. 7, Jones’ name kept popping up.
“There was a very strong feeling that (Jones) had something to do with it,” Hudak said. “When the players told me that, I made sure the detectives had it. I don’t know what came out of those tracks.”
In 2017, Pota police and relatives held a press conference to publicly ask for clues and advice. Then, and for the next three years, while journalists from ESPN working on the story, officers repeatedly said they believed there was someone out there, apart from the handle, with first-hand information, and that they needed that person to show up.
In September 2020, the Miami-Dade Police Department largely prevailed in the search for records filed by ESPN, In part because officers promised that they had renewed their interest in the case and that they would likely make an arrest in the “foreseeable future.” By this time, officers who had been working on the Pota investigation were retiring or were removed from the case. Police Chief Jorge Aguiar, who took over the Miami-Dade homicide office in the fall of 2020, told ESPN which he had assigned to Juan Segovia, one of the original detectives in the Pota case, to take over.
He said Segovia had been interviewing previous witnesses again, but gave no further details. After the story was published ESPN, Aguiar stopped responding to emails and voicemails looking for updates.
Jones has been charged and convicted of a variety of traffic and drug-related offenses over the years, including a same-day arrest and release in May, in connection with a second offense for driving with a suspended license in Columbia County , Florida. .
Jones appears on private coaching website CoachUp, which says he has 10 years of experience training adults, children and teens. The site says he volunteered with the football team at his anima mater, Columbia High School. At the top of his page is the following quote: “(I) have seen what mistakes you should not make when you have the whole world in your hands.”
ESPN’s Dan Arruda, Elizabeth Merrill, and Scott Frankel contributed to this report.