Three men were taken into custody Wednesday night in connection with the murder of a man whose body was found in downtown Jacksonville on Tuesday morning.
A news statement from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office says that Ryan Nichols, 19, of St. Johns, is charged with second-degree murder, while Daniel DeGuardia, 18, of St. Augustine, and Holden Dodson, 21, of Jacksonville are charged with being a party after the fact to murder.
Action News Jax told you before that the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office and SWAT Team helped JSO serve search warrants at a house in Stonehurst Plantation and a house in Durbin Park on Wednesday afternoon. The warrants were for a murder investigation in Jacksonville.
Around 6:45 a.m. Tuesday, a person walking by in the 500 block of West Ashley Street saw a guy lying on the ground next to a trash can. This person got the attention of a JSO judge, who then called in the report to dispatch.
An arrest report says that when more JSO officers came to the scene, they found “multiple shell casings (9mm), an extended magazine with live rounds (9mm), and multiple bullet holes in the dumpster.”
The Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department also came and said that the 39-year-old guy had been shot and was dead.
At 2 a.m. on Tuesday, at least one of the suspects was chasing the victim, according to the police report, and the victim tried to hide behind a dumpster.
Detectives from the Homicide and Crime Scene Unit found out from the report that the three men were going around the same time in a Jeep Grand Cherokee. They also found out that DeGuardia was driving and that Dodson and Nichols were passengers.
At the 7-Eleven on Julia Street, the car and the guys were seen. Investigators were able to find out that the car was registered to DeGuardia’s mother and follow it to an address in St. Augustine by using police records.
JSO also found out that Dodson had told them recently that he had lost a pistol (Glock model 48, 9mm size).
“Review of the body-worn camera footage related to his report of the lost gun further confirmed that Holden Dodson was the person who was in the Jeep Grand Cherokee and who went into the 7-Eleven around the time of the incident on May 2, 2023,” the report said.
The report said, “Nichols matched the physical appearance (height, skin color, gender, length and style of hair) of the person in the Jeep Grand Cherokee who was chasing the victim.”
Both the Crime Gun Intelligence Center and the Community Problem Response Units of the JSO helped find the car and the people who were driving it.
All three guys were taken into custody at the house where the murder car was also found.
