A Jackson TV station reported Monday afternoon that Joshua Brown, 19, may not have been anywhere near the shooting incident that killed Jackson State student Jaylen Burns on Oct. 15, which Brown has been charged with murder for.
WLBT (3 On Your Side) obtained videos from a gas station in Columbia and Krispy Kreme in Hattiesburg that reportedly show Brown, according to family spokesman Stan Buckley, a former lawyer and current pastor. The Jones College football player, who starred for the Columbia Wildcats when they won state in 2021, was seen getting gas around 7:30 p.m. in Columbia and going through the donut shop drive-thru around 9:30, both times driving a white truck. Buckley told WLBT reports have surfaced that a black Ford Mustang was involved in the killing.
The TV station claims that it first received reports of the shooting that killed Burns around 9:30.
“The position then of Jackson State must be that Josh Brown, within 13 to 23 minutes, was able to shoot someone, get in the car, drive 90 miles to Hattiesburg, change vehicles, get in the white truck that shows him at Krispy Kreme, leave there and go pick up a friend and then drive to Krispy Kreme all in 13 to 23 minutes in what I would say that’s a foolish position to take,” Buckley told WLBT.
However, Jackson State police, which is leading the investigation, claims the shooting happened around midnight. Regarding the vehicle aspect, WLBT reported that Brown does own a Mustang, but it was totaled two weeks earlier and currently resides in a junkyard.
Buckley told WLBT he’s turned over all the evidence he’s been able to obtain to Jackson State officials, whose only response has been that it remains an ongoing investigation.
“I don’t know how long you have to look at a piece of video. I don’t know how long that takes. But it didn’t take us long,” Buckley told WLBT reporter Brendan Hall. “And, meanwhile, Joshua Brown is rotting in prison over something he did not do. And they have the evidence in their possession.”
Brown currently faces the murder charge along with possession of a weapon on a school campus and remained in the Hinds County Detention Center as of press time Tuesday.
“He’s being held, and his life is being destroyed by Jackson State University because they refuse to look at, acknowledge and recognize the evidence that has been given to them,” Buckley told WLBT. “We are volunteers. They are paid people who are paid to investigate and do this work. And apparently, they’re just not doing it.”
Former Columbia and Jones teammate Jamison Kelly, a student at the University of Indiana, is also being held without bond as an accessory after the fact for being the alleged getaway driver for Brown.
The investigation seems to hinge on the timeline of the events that happened Oct. 15. If WLBT’s report is accurate that the shooting happened around 9:30 p.m. rather than midnight and investigators are able to confirm it was Brown who was driving the white truck at Krispy Kreme, it would have been physically impossible for Brown to have committed the crime more than 90 miles away.
