Police say they don’t have admissible evidence for an arrest in an unsolved 2019 Columbia homicide

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Nearly eight years after the January 2019 death of Dominick Roland, Columbia Police have persons of interest in the case, but are yet to arrest anyone.

Witnesses described to police a dispute that night between a man in the car with Roland and another man just before the drive-by shooting that killed Roland.

Roland was found in a crashed car with a gunshot wound near a gas station in the 3800 block of Range Line Street around 2:55 a.m. Jan. 26, 2019. He was being taken to a hospital in a private vehicle by his twin brother, Darius, when the crash happened.

CPD criminal investigator Lt. Matt Gremore says there's still not enough evidence to support formal charges that would hold up in court.

"There's a big difference between I heard this, and I know this, and because of that, we kind of get stuck in cases to where we're not able to close it. But we hear the same rumors that the community is hearing," Gremore said. "Because they're just rumors at that point and they're not factual things that we can put on paper to a probable cause statement, that's where it hurts us."

The events that ended with the crash on Range Line began earlier in the evening in central Columbia, according to records obtained by ABC 17 News. 

Based on statements provided to police, it is believed that Roland was with a group of three friends and his brother earlier in the evening on Jan. 25.

In an interview with ABC 17 News after Dominick Roland's death in 2019, his mother, Michelle Roland, described her son as loyal.

“Unfortunately, that has been the story of my son’s life because he is loyal to a fault,” she said. “He has always been with the wrong people at the wrong time.”

Records show the group met up between 11:30 p.m. and midnight to bar hop.

One witness told investigators the group would later drop off Roland’s brother, Darius, at his home on Raleigh Drive between 1:30 a.m. and 1:40 a.m. and that Dominick went back out with the rest of the group.

Dominick Roland was sitting in the back passenger seat. One of the men in the car told police they went east on Brown School Road toward Highway 63. He said that it was just a few minutes after leaving the Roland home when another car pulled up and started shooting as they approached the intersection with Derby Ridge Drive.

Numerous witness accounts noted a dark-colored or gray car, but Gremore would not confirm if police had identified a car of interest from that description.

"I can't tell you yes or no, that is the car. What I hope is that someone sees this and comes forward with more information to corroborate things that we might already know," Gremore said.

After the shooting, the group realized Dominick Roland was bleeding and took him back to his home on Raleigh Drive. It was there that they moved him into the family van with his brother driving.

Darius Roland crashed the car on the way to the hospital after he saw his brother become unresponsive.

"He was not talking, things didn't look good," Gremore said. "Obviously we didn't know the extent of how bad things were until he goes to the hospital."

The car wreck occurred at 2:55 a.m., and neighbors told police they heard shots fired at 2:39 a.m., leaving about an hour between the time Darius Roland was dropped off at home and when police found Dominick Roland shot in the car.

Police canvassed Raleigh Drive around 3:30 a.m., and during their investigation officers found blood on the road and the curb, believed to be from when the group moved Dominick Roland.

Around 10 a.m., officers found four guns in the back seat of a white Chevy pickup truck while searching the Roland home. One of the guns had Dominick's blood on it.

On Jan. 29, arrest warrants for weapons charges were issued for Laron Nesbitt and Jamaal Radcliffe --two men out with Roland the night he died --  related to the guns found in the truck. Those charges were later dropped.

Nesbitt is serving 17 years in prison after pleading guilty in April 2020 to the shooting of 20-year-old Deonte Gainwell. Gainwell was found dead from gunshot wounds early Jan. 17 in the 3700 block of Weymeyer Drive.

A jailhouse informant told police that Nesbitt had confided in him about an ongoing argument between him and another man in the hours leading up to Dominick Roland’s shooting. Nesbitt and the other person were allegedly arguing that night after running into each other at a club called Vibez in downtown Columbia.

The informant told police that Nesbitt said he believed the person he was arguing with that night was the shooter. However, Nesbitt allegedly said the car the shots came from was different from the car he saw the man in earlier that night.

When asked by police if he or anyone in the group had any ongoing disagreements that night that could have motivated the shooting, Nesbitt said he did not.

Gremore would not discuss a possible motive, but he said he doesn't believe the shooting was random.

In 2020, Columbia/Boone County CrimeStoppers raised its reward for any info leading to answers in Roland's killing and the death of 13 others to $3,000.