A Fairfax County man has been indicted in the Dec. 27 slaying of Jabrill Y. Mara, whom police found staggering along the Nutley Street ramp to Interstate 66 and was soon discovered to have two bullet wounds to his head.
Mara, the 20-year-old father of a 2-year-old girl, died two days later.
(Fairfax County Sheriff's Office) - Charncey L. Daniels is charged in the shooting death of Jabrill Y. Mara.
Virginia State Police arrested Charncey L. Daniels, 40, of the Springfield area, Jan. 3 and charged him with a felony count of leaving the scene of an accident, court records show. He was held without bond on that charge, and after a preliminary hearing last month the case was sent to the grand jury.
When the grand jury convened Monday, prosecutors instead obtained an indictment charging Daniels with murder. The indictment was unsealed Tuesday.
Daniels is being held in the Fairfax jail without bond. His attorney, Charles Swedish, said Daniels is innocent — that Daniels and Mara were friends and that his client “had no motive to kill his good friend.”
Swedish said that Daniels and Mara were in Daniels’s car and that Mara opened the passenger door and fell out on the Nutley Street ramp. Daniels got out to help Mara, Swedish said, then panicked when another car pulled up and then drove off.
“My client did not shoot him,” Swedish said. “We’re going to fight this case.”
Mara also lived in the Springfield area. As a student at Robert E. Lee High School, he began dating Carina Winston, and in their junior year Winston became pregnant.
For their senior year, Mara stayed home with the baby while Winston finished high school. Then Mara went back for his senior year and got his diploma from Bryant Alternative School in spring 2010. He was to start a new job as an auto mechanic in January.
Mara was a night owl, so when he headed out shortly after 10 p.m. Dec. 26, no one was surprised.
But three hours later, Mara was in the emergency room at Inova Fairfax Hospital. He never regained consciousness, and he died Dec. 29.
Swedish said that Mara’s family knew he was going out with Daniels and that it wouldn’t make sense for him to kill a person everyone knew he was with.
Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said Daniels was arrested in the District within days of the shooting and on Jan. 3 was extradited to Virginia on the charge of leaving the scene of an accident. Police did not disclose Mara’s death until Jan. 2 and did not reveal that they had a suspect in custody.
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