COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
A Columbia mother is asking community members to be brave and come forward to the police to help solve her son’s 2017 murder.
“It has really affected us … We just need someone to speak up and say what they saw,” Vivian Morgan said. “I guess they fear for their life, which is understandable. But I feel like we need to get justice for Jamar.”
Jamar Hicks was born in Minneapolis in 1990 and moved to Columbia with his mother when he was 5 years old.
“He was a kind and sweet young man,” Morgan said. “He was very friendly, spoke to everyone, and had a crazy laugh that everyone loved. You just heard him coming.”
His mother says growing up, her oldest son loved playing sports, including soccer, basketball and football. Hicks attended Shepard Boulevard Elementary School, Lange Middle School and graduated from Hickman High School.
After high school, his mother says Hicks worked in the shop at Bob McCosh. She said he loved cleaning and working with cars. He drove an Infiniti G35 Silver Coupe. His mother says he was driving that car the morning he died.
When shots were fired along Trimble Road in east Columbia around 3 a.m. on July 16, 2017, Columbia Police Lt. Matt Gremore said, officers were nearby at the IHOP and immediately ran over. When officers arrived, they found that a woman and a man in their 20s and Hicks had all been shot.
“I think they were ambushed, that’s what it looked like to me,” Gremore said. “I believe this was a targeted event.”
Gremore said Hicks was shot multiple times and was found inside the car. Police say the woman who was shot ran into the Break Time convenience store, and the other man who was shot was found nearby.
“The belief is they were all shot while inside the car,” Gremore said. “Two were able to run out and get out of the car … you could tell that the car had come across the road and had rested after hitting the curb here where it came to a stop.”
Gremore wouldn’t share a description of the suspect’s car but said police collected evidence at the scene, including shell casings, Hick’s car, the victims’ clothing and surveillance footage from nearby businesses.
“There [are] multiple people I believe are involved in this and multiple people that we would want to talk to, to get the truth out of them of what happened,” Gremore said.
Police say all three of the victims were taken to the hospital. Hicks’ friends survived, but he was pronounced dead not long after the shooting.
Check back and watch ABC 17 News at 10 for the rest of the story.