Prosecutor drops weapon charge in Columbia homicide

Boone County prosecutors dropped a weapon charge tied to a Columbia homicide.

First Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Roger Johnson announced in court on Tuesday that he would dismiss the case against Laron Nesbitt in connection to the death of Dominick Roland on Jan. 26. Nesbitt faced one count of unlawful possession of a weapon.

Nesbitt also faces charges of first-degree murder and armed criminal action for allegedly killing Deonte Gainwell a week prior.

Johnson told ABC 17 News after the hearing on Tuesday that he dropped charge to focus the office’s resources on the first-degree murder case against Nesbitt.

Columbia police said they found several guns in a truck bed outside of a house on Raleigh Drive the night Roland was shot and killed. A witness reported seeing Nesbitt with Roland and two other people at the house just prior to the shooting. Police claim Roland grabbed several guns from a house after he feared someone was following them around that night, and that Nesbitt allegedly said something about doing “a hit” on someone.

Nesbitt’s attorney, Jenan Thompson, filed motions to dismiss both cases last week because of delays in getting discovery. Thompson filed a motion to compel prosecutors to hand over the case information on March 18 in both cases. A hearing on the issue in the murder case is set for April 10.

Johnson said preparing the evidence to hand over to the defense team in a murder case took a greater amount of time than a regular case. Online court records show that Johnson sent the discovery on Tuesday afternoon.