Discovery materials released so far in the case of an ex-Miami football player charged with second-degree murder in the killing of his teammate Bryan Pata include additional details but no evidence or witness statements police didn’t know about more than a decade ago, when the case went cold.
In August, police arrested Rashaun Jones, 36, in the Nov. 7, 2006, death of Pata, who was shot once in the head outside his Miami-area apartment after football practice. An investigation last year by ESPN revealed that Jones had been a suspect since at least 2007.
The discovery documents — more than 250 pages released last week in response to a public records request filed by ESPN — reveal previously withheld portions of police reports. They include notes from an interview with a man who told police he witnessed someone “jogging” away from the parking lot in which Pata was shot just seconds after hearing a “pop” noise. Seven months after the shooting, the man would pick Jones out of a photo lineup.
While prosecutors can continue to provide discovery materials to the defense as the case awaits its Jan. 31, 2022, trial date, it’s still unclear what prompted police to arrest Jones in August after determining for more than decade that there wasn’t enough evidence to pursue charges. The discovery materials released to ESPN include no new witnesses, interviews or references to any evidence gathered since 2010.
When asked about the documents, a spokesperson for Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said he could not comment on a pending case; additional material may be filed at a later date, but there is no set deadline.
Michael Mirer, an attorney for Jones, wrote in a text message Wednesday that there was “insufficient evidence to arrest and charge my client in 2006. There is no new evidence to charge my client in 2021. Charging someone with a crime 15 years later with no new evidence is outrageous and unacceptable.”
The discovery documents shed additional light on why police suspected Jones, including confirmation that Jones’ teammates said he owned a .38-caliber gun, and that that was the type of gun used to kill Pata, although there is no indication that the actual weapon has ever been found.
The report quotes one of Pata’s friends telling police that he saw Jones and Pata get into a fistfight on campus in 2004 and overheard Jones say, “I have a gun. You better start clipping.”
The newly released information reveals greater detail about claims that Jones, on the day of Pata’s killing, was asking for money. According to the police report, Miami baseball player Mike Sanders said Jones called and asked him for a “large amount” of money, and Sanders later told Hurricanes coach Larry Coker that he was concerned about Jones. Sanders also told police that Jones told him he was not going to the Hecht Athletic Center that night for the team meeting. On the day after the shooting, police received a call from Paul Conner, a University of Miami writing instructor, who said that around 7 p.m. he was walking south on a sidewalk approaching the Colony Apartments, where he and Pata both lived. Conner was approaching the north parking lot entrance when “he heard what he described as a ‘pop’ noise,” the report states.
“Mr. Conner walked between three or four footsteps when he suddenly witnessed a black male, between 6’0″ and 6’1″ tall, who was wearing a black T-shirt and dark blue or black shorts, jogging or trotting west through the parking lot.” In the report, Conner described the man as in his 20s, fit, slender, with close-cut hair and a neatly trimmed beard, and stated that he “appeared pleasant because he was smiling.”
As Conner entered the parking lot, he saw a large black “fancy” SUV — later determined to be Pata’s Infiniti QX56 — with its headlights and taillights on, but, from his vantage point, Conner said he did not notice anyone on the ground. Police later ran tests on the SUV to determine the lights routinely turned off after 48 seconds after the vehicle was locked; they were off when officers arrived that night.
Conner told police that he learned of Pata’s death the next day and did not “put two and two together” until he started thinking about the man he encountered. He told an investigator that he could identify the person because he was an Army veteran and pays attention to detail.
Two days after the shooting, Conner worked with a sketch artist to generate an image of the man, but it was not released to the public at the time.
In the months following the shooting, after police gathered more statements pertaining to Jones, they returned to Conner in June 2007 and showed him two photo lineups. The first did not have a photo of Jones, but the second did. Conner said he didn’t see anyone he recognized in the first lineup, according to the report. But when presented with the second lineup, he said, “I see the guy that ran past me.” Conner pointed to the picture in the center top row. It was Jones. “This is him, but to be fair, he doesn’t have a thin beard so I’m going to have to say it’s him 90%.”
Conner, 77, was re-interviewed in September 2020, according to the arrest warrant, and was shown a new photo lineup in which he again identified Jones. That lineup is not included in the materials released last week.
The discovery documents also reveal that in the summer of 2007, investigators contacted the Lake City (Florida) Police Department about comparing ballistics from a February 2007 homicide involving Jones’ brother, Terrance Jones, with the projectile found in Pata. The projectiles did not match.
After months of tracking down leads that included club fights, stolen rims, a jilted ex-girlfriend and tension with the family of Pata’s girlfriend, Jada Brody, it was clear that Rashaun Jones had become the focus of the investigation by June 2007. Six Miami-Dade Police Department investigators met with lead detective Miguel Dominguez to go over the case on June 21, 2007.
They discussed a telephone call Miami receivers coach Marquis Mosely received from Jones’ girlfriend, who told Mosely, according to the report, that Jones “was out of it” on the night of the killing. They noted that Jones didn’t speak to any of Miami’s coaches after Pata’s killing. Eight of the nine documented highlights of the meeting involved Jones.
Three days later, Conner picked out Jones in the photo lineup.
The police investigation had stalled for more than a decade when, in March 2020, ESPN sued the Miami-Dade Police Department for access to the full, unredacted report arguing that the case had gone cold. But police resisted, saying the details pertained to an “active investigation.”
Officers told a judge that they expected an arrest in “the foreseeable future,” and the judge allowed them to continue withholding almost all of the portions of the documents at issue in the ESPN lawsuit. Many of those redactions were revealed in the discovery documents released last week.
Police testimony during July and August 2020 in the public records case revealed that the investigators had a suspect shortly after the 2006 shooting and had come close to making an arrest, even though officers said publicly for years that they never had a single person of interest. Through records and other statements made during hearings on the lawsuit, it became clear that the suspect had been Jones.
