Roommate charged with killing former Loyola basketball star found dead in vacant Baltimore home
By Rohan Mattu
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BALTIMORE, Maryland (WJZ) — A Baltimore man has been charged in the death of Jamal Barney, a former Loyola men’s basketball standout found dead in a vacant home last year.
Dayrel McFarland, 28, is charged with first-and second-degree murder, first- and second-degree assault and other related charges. McFarland was Barney’s roommate in the vacant home, according to charging documents.
Barney, 37, was reported missing on October 2. Police responded to the house in the 500 block of North Payson Street, where Barney’s family told police nobody had seen or heard from him for nine days and that he might be dead inside the house.
According to charging documents, the responding officer found a body stuffed inside a mattress that had been covered with blankets and clothes.
The body was reportedly mummified and so decomposed that the gender and race of the victim couldn’t be determined. Officials believe the decomposition was accelerated by the body being stuffed inside the mattress.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner identified Barney by tattoos and ruled his death a homicide by blunt force trauma to the head.
The day after Barney’s body was found, McFarland was arrested on an outstanding warrant and questioned. He only admitted to being Barney’s roommate, police said.
Investigators then found a witness who told them McFarland killed Barney by hitting him in the head with a cinderblock and hiding his body in a mattress.
After positive DNA testing of a cinderblock stained with blood found at the home, investigators concluded McFarland killed Barney.
Barney grew up in Baltimore and attended Southwestern High School before eventually playing two seasons of basketball at Loyola University. He was the Greyhounds’ leading scorer in both of those seasons. He started off his college career at Providence before transferring to Loyola.
In three seasons at Loyola, Barney scored 1,000 career points and had two 40-point games.
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