A grand jury has indicted seven men with murder in Clarksville after an innocent man lost his life at the hands of bail bondsmen and bounty hunters.
The family of Jalen Johnson is feeling some relief tonight after the men responsible for taking the life of that young father of three, have been arrested and are facing multiple charges.
William Byles, 31, of Clarksville, Kenneth Chiasson, 38, of Clarksville, Antwon Keesee, 32, of Clarksville, Jonathan Schnepp, 31, of Clarksville, Roger West, 31, of Clarksville, Prentice Williams, 34, of Nevada, and Joshua Young, 27 of Clarksville were all arrested and charged on Tuesday.
"The thing is they have to follow the same guidelines as everyone else when it comes to deadly force," said Jim Knoll, Clarksville Police Department, Public Information Officer.
A Montgomery grand jury decided that several bail bondsmen and bounty hunters did not follow the proper guidelines before using deadly force to take the life of 24-year-old Jalen Johnson.
"We found nothing to show that the men in the vehicle had any type of firearms or that they shot at these individuals at all," said Knoll.
The seven men have been indicted on 16 charges. including first degree felony murder, attempted second degree murder and especially aggravated kidnapping.
"When these guys were in the car no one in the car had any warrants on them and there was no reason for any of them to try to take them from that vehicle. So they were basically being held against their will at that time," said Knoll.
The men were looking for William Ellis, when they shot and killed the young Clarksville father.
Now three children are forced to grow up without the one person they call Dad, and because of that, police are happy that their hard work paid off.
"You can see the end result, we got the indictments that we were hoping for," said Knoll.
Clarksville police tell us this was an exhausting investigation especially when they were processing so many crime scenes, and not everyone involved in the investigation was cooperating.
Each of the seven men are being held on a $300 thousand bond.
