LITTLE ROCK — A week after an Arkansas Baptist College football player was shot and killed across the street from campus, Little Rock police said there is a cash reward for information that leads to the arrest of the student’s killer.
An anonymous donor is offering a $10,000 reward for information in the Sept. 27 shooting that killed Derek Olivier, according to Little Rock Police Department spokesman Sgt. Cassandra Davis.
The reward is one of two rewards currently being offered by law enforcement agencies for information on unsolved homicides. Three arrests were made last week in a third homicide in which a reward was offered for information.
Olivier, 19, came to Little Rock from New Iberia, La., and was one of a few people helping a friend change a tire on a car at the intersection of West 16th and Bishop streets,just yards from campus, when a man approached the group and opened fire.
Another student and Buffalo football teammate, Courtney Henry, was grazed in the attack.
Davis said that detectives don’t have any information on a suspect, nor have they determined a motive behind the slaying.
The day after Olivier’s death, police investigated reports that the shooting was the result of a gambling debt accrued in a past dice game and that Olivier was not the intended target of the gunman. Davis said that after a few more days of investigating, detectives said there was no such connection in the student’s death.
Olivier’s death marked the 40th homicide investigation by Little Rock police, who count the accidental May 23 shooting death of 14-year-old Tyjuan Woodard, in their homicide total.
There is still a $25,000 reward for information in the city’s 20th homicide, in which recent Central High School graduate Terry Bullard was killed on May 26, gunned down outside a 521 Center St. club after a fight broke out nearby.
The E-Z Mart company put up a $10,000 reward for the arrest of the three men seen on camera trying to rob the company’s 3600 MacArthur Drive store on Sept. 22.
In that robbery, one of the suspects shot and killed 29-year-old clerk Akiya Egeston.
By Sept. 29, North Little Rock investigators arrested and charged three men with capital murder and aggravated robbery in Egeston’s death. Details of the investigation remained unavailable but suspects Jacobi Robinson, 20, Maclin Rogers, 20 and Davion Howard remained at the Pulaski County jail on no bail.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 10/05/2012