MAGNOLIA, Ark. (AP) — A judge denied bail to four men charged in the fatal shooting of a 21-year-old Arkansas college student.
Quincy Lewis, 19, Shaivonn Robinson, 19, Le’Kamerin Tolbert, 20 and Odies Wilson, 21, were arrested Friday on capital murder and aggravated robbery charges in the Aug. 11 killing of Joshua Keshun Smith, an engineering student who was starting his senior year at the school when he was gunned down in a Southern Arkansas University parking lot.
During an arraignment hearing Monday, Judge David W. Talley Jr. denied bail to the defendants and issued a gag order forbidding all parties in the case from discussing it publicly. He said a gag order was necessary to “let this case proceed properly” and that he didn’t want any “extraneous information leaked out there,” the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Tuesday.
A student who was wounded in the attack remained hospitalized in stable condition.
Tolbert and Robinson have been kicked off the school’s football team, according to its athletic department. Wilson used to play for the school and was enrolled as a student. Lewis was not a student there.
Wilson hired an attorney, while the three other defendants were represented by attorneys appointed to them.
The Columbia County sheriff’s office and Magnolia Police Department both referred calls regarding the shooting to the Southern Arkansas University Police Department. A patrol officer Monday referred the newspaper to the prosecuting attorneys in the case, Ryan Phillips and Ryan Rainwater.
Phillips said he requested the gag order during Monday’s hearing and that he wouldn’t be allowed to answer questions about the case.
