Starkville native Jaylen Jernigan said the last time he saw his best friend, 24-year-old Jarrell Ward, the two had been gambling on video games in a Starkville apartment against Columbus resident Joshua Murry the morning of July 26, 2018.

Murry, part of a group of “Columbus guys” against whom Jernigan, Ward and some of their friends had been competing against the night before and on into the morning, had been steadily losing money to Jernigan and Ward, and finally ran out, Jernigan said. Murry offered to keep playing, but said he would have to drive back to his home in Columbus to collect any more money that he owed them.

That’s when Jernigan decided to leave.

“I said, ‘(Jarrell), I don’t gamble on air,'” Jernigan remembered, meaning he didn’t want to gamble against someone who did not have their money with them. “‘We don’t do that.'”

But Ward decided to stay and keep playing with Murry, while Jernigan left the apartment. That was the last time he saw Ward alive.

Jernigan was the second in a long list of witnesses testifying at the ongoing murder trial of Murry, who was arrested for Ward’s death on Aug. 1, 2018, the same day Ward’s body was discovered in a wooded area off Sand Road in Lowndes County. Murry, 29, now faces charges of first degree murder and conspiracy.

The trial began Wednesday and is not expected to end until some time next week, as prosecutors continue to question law enforcement officers and forensic experts who can testify to everything from evidence discovered in Murry’s vehicle — which included a bullet hole, blood stains and broken glass matching glass found by Ward’s body, District Attorney Scott Colom said in opening statements — to Murry’s phone records. But the first day was given over entirely to friends of Ward and Murry, who had participated in what they all said was a series of “friendly” gambling games between a group from Columbus and a group from Starkville.

Witness testimony

Ward, Jernigan and two other friends had arrived at a party in a Columbus apartment on July 25, 2018, where they met up with some friends to gamble on dice and video games, Jernigan and the other witnesses said. At some point that evening, Murry arrived at the same party and he and his friends Greg Morris and Tremarcus Monroe began to play against Ward and his friends from Starkville.

“Starkville guys, they won most of the money,” Monroe said during his testimony. “I don’t think they lost a game.”

After the host ended the party in Columbus, the group drove to Starkville to continue gambling. Gradually, they dropped off to sleep until only Jernigan, Ward and Murry were up playing. Jernigan left after Murry ran out of money. When Murry woke up his fellow Columbus players to drive them back to Columbus, Ward rode with them to collect his money.

Murry dropped the two riders from Columbus off at their homes and left with Ward, who Monroe said had been planning to rent a car with the money Murry gave him to drive back to Starkville.

Morris, the last to be dropped off before Ward, said he specifically remembered Ward getting into the front passenger seat of Murry’s car. He said he shook hands with Ward, who he had just met the night before, and told Murry he would catch up with him later, since the two were supposed to meet for a dice game later that day.

But he never saw Ward again, and Murry didn’t show up for the dice game.

Later, when everyone realized Ward was missing, Jernigan and some of Ward’s family called Murry. Murry told them he dropped Ward off at the Donut Factory on Highway 45 with a “female and a red Kia.”

“He sounded kind of paranoid,” Jernigan said. “He just sounded shaky when he was saying he dropped him off.”

Colom said in opening arguments that investigators never found any sign of a “female and a red Kia” on surveillance videos from the Donut Factory at the time Murry claimed to have dropped Ward off. Moreover, he said, the story Jernigan, Monroe and the other players told — along with evidence from law enforcement officers and forensic experts who will continue to testify into next week — will convince the jury that Murry murdered Ward over the gambling debt.

“These pieces of evidence tell us … that Josh Murry murdered Jarrell Ward,” he said. “There’s going to be no other reasonable explanation for all this evidence.”

But Murry’s attorney, Alton Earl Peterson of Jackson, raised doubts about the evidence, pointing out that Murry may not have been the last person to see Ward before Ward died, and that none of the witnesses saw any sign of conflict between the two.

“The truth of the matter is we really don’t know what happened to Jarrell Ward,” he said. “… We don’t know who was the last person to see him because the last person to see him was obviously the one to kill him, and that was not Joshua Murry.”