A former University of Alabama basketball player was in jail Sunday night after he was arrested in connection with a fatal shooting near campus, authorities said.
The Tuscaloosa County Sheriff’s Office said Darius Hairston Miles, 21, of Washington, D.C., was one of two people arrested after shooting into vehicles just off the Strip, Tuscaloosa’s near-campus nightlife district.
He was arraigned on suspicion of murder and is being held without bail, the office said in a statement. The victim has been identified as 23-year-old Jemma Joanne Harris.
None of the other parties were affiliated with the organization. It was unclear whether Miles has retained private counsel for the case. The public defender’s office in Tuscaloosa did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Alabama athletics said Sunday that it extends its deepest sympathies to the victim’s family and friends and announced that Miles is no longer part of its basketball team.
Miles’ name was not on the institution’s basketball roster online late Sunday. “He has been removed from our campus,” the university said in a statement.
The basketball program said Saturday that Miles, a junior forward, has been ruled out for the rest of the season after aggravating a preseason injury.
It was unclear whether Miles was no longer a student or if the institution could expel him without due process. The sheriff’s statement addressed his position with the university over past tensions.
The shooting is said to have taken place in the nightlife district on Sunday morning. Sheriff’s officials did not say which of the two suspects is accused of firing the shots or whether they believe both did so.
“At this time it appears that the shooting was the result of a minor altercation between the victim and the suspects after they confronted each other in the bar,” the sheriff’s office said.
Shortly before 2 a.m., a driver pulled up to a University of Alabama police vehicle on the Walk of Champions near Bryant-Denny Stadium to find that a passenger, still inside, had been fatally shot, the office said.
The driver told investigators that someone in another vehicle fired shots at his vehicle just across the strip and that he fired back, possibly injuring someone in the opposing vehicle, it said.
Detectives with the sheriff’s violent crimes unit tracked down the two suspects after speaking with witnesses and viewing security video, the office said.
The office said one of the two suspects was wounded in the shooting; It did not identify Kun or say whether he was hospitalized.
Another suspect, who was also indicted on a capital murder charge, has been identified as Michael Lynn Davis, 20, of Charles County, Maryland.
The university has said that it is assisting in the investigation.
Members of the campus community affected by the violence can also contact campus counselors during Monday’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday, the university said in its statement.