Florida police on Thursday arrested the teammate of star University of Miami football player Bryan Pata, who was gunned down 15 years ago, authorities said.
Rashaun Jones, a 35-year-old former Hurricanes defensive back, was taken into custody and booked on suspicion of Pata’s Nov. 7, 2006 slaying, Miami-Dade police said.
Jones was picked up by U.S. Marshals and it wasn’t immediately clear if he had been assigned an attorney on Thursday afternoon.
“I can only hope that this bring the Pata family a little bit of closure, a little bit of satisfaction knowing that at least the person who took Bryan’s life is now in custody,” Miami-Dade Police Detective Juan Segovia said in a videotaped message.
“I want to thank the Pata family … because it’s been 15 years of waiting, 15 years of missing Bryan, 15 years of waiting for results.”
Pata, a Miami native and star defensive lineman, was shot outside his apartment in Kendall, Florida.
Pata’s unsolved murder has hung over the famed football program and has been the subject of years-long speculation in South Florida.
“For us we always say it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. For us it’s about getting it right,” Segovia said.
“The community never stopped contacting us. And even if we got a thousand tips but only one of them was the one that actually put the pieces together, that’s what it took and that’s exactly what happened in this case.”
It’s not immediately clear whether there was a court date scheduled for Jones.
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Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
