A day before a Central Michigan University sophomore from southwest suburban Plainfield fatally shot his parents inside his dorm, he acted erratically, telling a campus police officer that someone was out to kill him, authorities said Saturday, hours before he was formally charged with murder.
James Eric Davis Jr., 19, was arrested without incident shortly after midnight Saturday following an intensive daylong manhunt that included more than 100 police officers scouring the campus area, authorities said. Officers found him after someone aboard a train spotted a person along railroad tracks in Mount Pleasant, and called police.
Davis was taken into custody and later charged with two counts of murder and a felony weapon charge, according to a statement from CMU officials. Davis remained under guard at a hospital Saturday and is expected to be moved to the Isabella County jail when he’s discharged. It was unclear when he might make his first court appearance.
The 2016 Plainfield Central High School graduate is accused of shooting his parents, James Eric Davis Sr. and Diva Jeneen Davis. Davis Sr. was a police officer in west suburban Bellwood and an Illinois National Guard veteran who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Diva Davis’ Facebook page identified her as a real estate broker; friends said she was also a breast cancer survivor and had worked as a flight attendant.
During a news conference Saturday morning in Michigan, university police Chief Bill Yeagley told reporters that Davis’ parents had just picked him up from the hospital and brought him to his dorm to pack up for spring break when Friday’s shooting occurred.
On Thursday, a day before the shooting, CMU police encountered Davis Jr. when he came running into a community police office in his dorm “very frightened” and “not making a lot of sense.”
“He said someone was out to hurt him, someone was going to harm him, and the officer calmed him down and tried to gain more information about what was going on. Mr. Davis was very vague and he kept talking about someone having a gun,” Yeagley said, adding that Davis Jr. said he had not actually seen the person with a gun.
Davis Jr. eventually talked about riding in a dorm elevator with the person, and police went to talk to the individual Davis Jr. had identified. Yeagley said that when officers determined that the person posed no threat — and reviewed video from the elevator that showed Davis Jr. and that person laughing — Davis Jr. said he was fine and was leaving campus Friday for spring break.
Hours later, officers spotted Davis Jr. in a dorm hallway with his suitcases, Yeagley said. When officers tried to talk to him, he again wasn’t making sense, Yeagley said, adding that the student was acting “in a fashion that isn’t reasonable or logical.” They asked Davis Jr. to call his parents, which he did. An officer then spoke to Davis’ mother, Diva Davis, told them about her son’s behavior, their concerns about possible drug use and asked her whether he had a history of drug use, Yeagley said.
“The mother said she too was concerned this could be drugs,” he said. He declined to say whether drugs were found in Davis Jr.’s system.
Video footage showed Davis Jr. in the dorm’s parking lot with the gun before he entered the residence hall where his parents were shot around 8:30 a.m., authorities said.
Authorities suggested that Davis’ parents may have been caught off guard, saying both were “simply packing up for spring break” inside his fourth-floor dorm at the campus’ Campbell Hall when they were killed.
Yeagley said the gun used in the shooting belonged to Davis’ father, but wouldn’t say whether the father had brought the gun to the university’s campus in Mount Pleasant, Mich., when picking up his son. It was also unclear whether the gun was the elder Davis’ police service weapon.
News of Friday’s slaying spread ripples of shock and grief through separate circle of friends who knew Davis Sr. and Diva Davis as examples of the American dream, hard-working people who wanted better for their children.
Davis Sr., who served in the Illinois National Guard for more than two decades before retiring in 2014, was well liked and had a lot of friends, said Lt. Col. Brad Leighton, an Illinois National Guard spokesman.
As a recruiter for the National Guard, Davis was “disarmingly personable,” able to easily connect with many of the young men and women he came in contact with, according to Jordan Murphy, who worked with Davis in the early 2000s.
Murphy, who now lives in Florida, said he was shocked to learn the Davis Jr. was allegedly responsible for his parents’ death.
“He wasn’t a good kid—he was a great kid. A kid from a traditional, respectful, value-filled family,” Murphy said.
Childhood classmates for Diva Davis, who spent her youth in Gary, Ind., were also stunned by her death. Pam Jones, an anchor for WGN radio who attended Wirt High School with Davis, said she was in disbelief when she heard another anchor mention the Davis family name.
“All I could say was, ‘No!’ Jones said. “Diva was just as friendly as her beautiful smile suggests. If you look at her yearbook photo and compare it to the one from her Facebook page, it looks like no time has passed at all. “
James Wilson, who said he first met Davis in 1974 when the two were in daycare, said he’d reconnected with her not long ago after recently losing his parents. “She was just very encouraging, and we had a great conversation. She was so proud of all her kids.”
Longtime friend and classmate James Powell recalled Davis as a “trendsetter” to whom everyone looked up. Another friend, Tyjuana Hedrick-Powell remembered Davis as a “go-getter” who succeeded in whatever path she took — from Mary Kay cosmetics to real estate agent — though she particularly loved being a flight attendant with American Airlines. “You could hear it in her voice. She loved to travel,” she said.
President Trump’s “Saturday Night Live” alter-ego can’t save every school shooting victim.
The show’s Trump, as portrayed by actor Alec Baldwin, mirrored reality Saturday night by suggesting he would personally bust into besieged schools if it would improve campus safety in the wake of Florida’s Valentine’s Day massacre.
“Folks, I can only run into so many schools and save everybody. If I could, I’d run into all of them, even without a weapon,” Baldwin’s Trump said. “The guy with the gun wouldn’t even know what hit him.”
The actor said he would continue his unarmed rampage across the Pacific Ocean, and to North Korea.
“I’d keep running and running to North Korea, completely unarmed,” he said, in spite of Trump having threatened to take military action against the isolated nation. “I’d find Little Rocket Man, pick him up and throw him over the great wall of Korea.”
Baldwin’s return to the show follows a blustery Twitter rant the real commander-in-chief spewed Friday by demanding that SNL to bring back announcer Darrell Hammond to take over the fluffy blond wig.
The cold open continued to cover a whirlwind of news that refused to stop, even as the sketch show took a weeks-long break for NBC to broadcast the Winter Olympics from South Korea.
President Trump, portrayed by Alec Baldwin, is overwhelmed by Kate McKinnon as U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
(NBC)
Baldwin reaffirmed Trump’s campaign pledge to manage the country like a business, even though that business turned out to be a Waffle House packed with “crazies” at 2 a.m.
He quipped that true to life, the staff is walking out in the middle of their shift shortly after addressing Trump’s disappearing circle of confidants at the White House, most recently Hope Hicks. The 29-year-old is expected to step down from her position as communications director.
“She’s like a daughter to me. So smart, so hot,” Baldwin said, lingering on the last word. “She resigned. You know, I hate seeing her go, but I love watching her walk away.”
“Boom bah, boom bah,” he said as he gestured about her figure with his hands.
The joke garnered some laughs, but mostly groans from the Studio 8H audience as it appeared to reference a 2006 interview where Trump jokingly complimented Ivanka Trump’s figure and said he would date her — if she wasn’t his daughter.
The only member of Trump’s administration that refuses to leave is U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who he lovingly nicknamed Mr. Magoo, according to a Washington Post report Wednesday.
Cecily Strong portrayed outgoing White House Communications Director Hope Hicks and jokingly referred to her time with Trump as a “semester abroad.”
(NBC)
“Mr. Magoo,” Baldwin said of the moniker. “Everyone loves it. ‘Stop. I’m laughing so hard. I can’t take it anymore. I resign.’”
Cecily Strong, as Hope Hicks, said goodbye to her White House peers during the show’s “Weekend Update” segment.
The cast member compared Hicks’ brief stint as communication director stint as “a semester abroad.”
She saved her most gushing appreciation for Trump’s daughter, Ivanka.
“It’s been a neverending sleep over,” Strong, as Hicks, said of her time with Trump’s campaign and administration. “One where you wake up in the middle of the night, and you open your eyes and you’re like, ‘Is that my dad’s friend in the doorway? Is he just like standing there watching us?’”
