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Search continues for suspect in fatal shooting

A motive for the shooting has not been given. The suspect, 30, has a prison record.

By JONATHAN ABEL
Published December 6, 2006

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Maurice Rivenbark] Tyrone Smith walks his nephew's dog Cane past 22230 Whitman Road, north of Brooksville, Tuesday morning. Smith lives nearby but did not know the shooting victim. The night before, Jacques Anton Jones, 24, was shot in the head in the back yard at the residence. Jones died in a Tampa hospital from the wound.

BROOKSVILLE - The Hernando County SWAT team staged in the parking lot of Community Baptist Church on Monday morning, in front of three signs proclaiming: "Jesus. The reason for the season."

About 7:30 that morning, a deputy had seen a black 1985 Chevrolet Monte Carlo parked by a clump of trailers off Centralia Road.

That was the same car seen leaving the scene of Monday night's fatal shooting of Jacques Jones.

Deputies closed off Centralia Road. Small groups of camouflaged men snuck up to the trailers and evacuated the residents. Then they got ready to pounce on the main suspect in the slaying - Joshua Langley, 30.

But when they moved in around 10:30, he was nowhere to be found.

On Monday night, Jones became the fifth slaying victim this year in Hernando County. Before October, there had been no shooting or stabbing deaths in the county since August 2004.

Since then there has been a spate of them.

According to the Sheriff's Office, Jones was shot in the head in the back yard of a home at 22230 Whitman Road. The 24-year-old was flown to St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, where he died overnight.

Tuesday night, a judge issued a warrant for Langley's arrest on the charge of first-degree murder.

No motive has been given for the crime.

A woman who answered the phone at Jones' house on Jacobson Road said that the death was a "family issue," and that she didn't want to discuss it.

At Langley's last known address, 809 School St. in South Brooksville, family members stood in the driveway. They shooed away a reporter, saying there was nothing to talk about.

Over the course of the day, deputies said they was looking for Robert L. Wright, 24, who witnessed the shooting. Then, investigators said they had found him without saying what he revealed.

Langley has served three separate stints in prison totaling eight years, for armed burglary, robbery with a gun and robbery with a deadly weapon.

He was released from prison in November 2005.

He is considered armed and dangerous.

Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Jonathan Abel can be reached at jabel@sptimes.com or 352 754-6114.

[Last modified December 5, 2006, 23:42:07]