According to a report from the Davis Police Department, on Saturday, Davis Police officers were dispatched to 945 J Street, an apartment in the College Square Apartments on J Street, to a report of a dead body.
The case has been investigated as a homicide with the victim identified as a 42-year-old male resident of Davis. Authorities are withholding identification, pending positive identification by the Yolo County Coroner’s Office.
At approximately 8:30 PM, Davis Police Detectives arrested James Elrond Mings (a 36-year-old male who resides in the Davis area) for the murder.
At this point, detectives believe James Mings used his hands to strangle and kill the victim, but a formal autopsy is pending.
Mr. Mings will be arraigned Wednesday afternoon in Yolo Superior Court.
The original report occurred around 10:30 am with two men placing a 911 call requesting medical assistance.
Police reports indicate that Mr. Mings and the victim were relatively new acquaintances, they believe Mr. Mings used his hands to strangle and kill the victim, and they do not believe the motivation for the killing was robbery or theft.
The Vanguard’s search indicates no known criminal history for Mr. Mings.
According to a report in the Davis Enterprise, the last murder in Davis was November 18, 2004 when a 35-year-old resident was killed by gunfire in the doorway of his apartment on Cowell Blvd.
The culprit, Eric Chase, would plead guilty to charges of voluntary manslaughter and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
The Vanguard will have further details as they become available.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of the victim.
Murder is, fortunately, very rare in Davis. But we have our share of other violent crimes (robberies, assaults, rapes, etc.)
On the Davis Police Department website, they have a monthly breakdown over 24 months from 2007-09 how many major crimes were investigated by the DPD, called the Uniform Crime Reporting statistics ([url]http://cityofdavis.org/police/pdfs/UCR Data (2007-2009).pdf[/url]).
I have never looked into this, but I wonder why the report they show covers such a short amount of time and why it is so out of date (ending September, 2009).
I wonder if the problem is that it takes labor time to put together this sort of report and more to put it up on their website and the DPD now lacks the civilian labor to post up-to-date statistics and those which go back further in time. Among the areas of city government which have taken the biggest hits from budget cuts over the past two years have been with our non-sworn employees of the DPD.
I think it would be useful to see a more complete data set to know the trends in major crimes. But if we don’t have the employees in place to do that, it won’t happen.