On the evening of September 10, 2022, 19-year-old Derrick Kentrail Leonard of Blytheville was found in the roadway in the 1100 block of Links Circle near the Links Apartments in Jonesboro with a gunshot wound. Officers and emergency medical crews treated him at the scene and he was taken to a local hospital, where he later died during surgery. Jonesboro police reclassified the shooting as a homicide the next day.

Detectives canvassed the apartment complex and surrounding streets but encountered a wall of silence; no one at the scene initially cooperated and no person of interest had been identified by mid-September. Forensic analysis of Leonard’s cell phone allowed investigators to track communications and location data that yielded multiple persons of interest and led them to focus on a Jonesboro man, Nickelas N. Brewer. An affidavit said witnesses reported Brewer spoke about robbing and shooting Leonard and that investigators believed an attempted robbery was the apparent motive.

Brewer was located in Arizona and extradited to Arkansas. Prosecutors filed a first-degree murder charge, but court records and reporting show that the murder charge was later dropped after Brewer pleaded guilty to unrelated breaking-or-entering counts and received a 10-year sentence for those offenses. With the homicide charge dismissed, Leonard’s killing remains without a convicted shooter. Can anyone who was near Links Apartments that night or who has information about Leonard’s movements or associates please come forward?