The Dallas Police Department arrested a 46-year-old man in connection with a fatal shooting incident outside a Far East Dallas nightclub last year.
On Thursday, Jerrard Straughn Cola, 46, was taken into custody and booked into the Dallas County Jail for a murder charge. Cola, who does not have an attorney listed in court records, was arrested for the death of Reginald Agnew Jr.
Just before 2 a.m. on Sept. 14, 2020, police received a call about a shooting in the parking lot outside Tropics, in the 3700 block of Dilido Road.
According to an arrest warrant, they found Agnew, 33, lying in a pool of blood when officers arrived. Agnew had been shot multiple times in the back. Paramedics took him to Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, where he was pronounced dead.
The affidavit revealed that investigators reviewed surveillance footage and saw a man with a gun getting into a black Mercedes as people ran for cover from the gunfire. A detective contacted the vehicle’s registered owner, and the owner said that she had sold it for cash to a man whose name she didn’t know.
According to the affidavit, this April, a man driving the same Mercedes threatened two people with a handgun at a northeast Dallas gas station. A woman called 911 about the April incident gave police a picture of the man brandishing a weapon. Police identified Cola as the man in the image provided by the woman and that he resembled the suspect found in footage from the nightclub.
Investigators also found out that the car had been towed from an apartment complex in northeast Dallas, with Cola claiming ownership of the vehicle.
Authorities obtained a warrant for Cola’s cellphone records, and it was later found out he was near Tropics around the time of the shooting.
Cola’s bond has been set at $500,000.