FBI agent: Cellular data puts Jocquez Ross' phone near murder scene
Cellular phone records call into question Jocquez Ross' alibis for the time during which he is accused of shooting to death a married couple in a rental car near Midway Mall in January 2016, an FBI agent testified Wednesday.
Ross, 29, of Lorain, is on trial on charges of aggravated murder and other felonies in the deaths of Michael "LuLu" Lewis and Fannie Thomas Lewis. He could receive the death penalty if a Lorain County Common Pleas jury recommends it.
Supervisory Special Agent Kevin Horan of the FBI's Cellular Analysis Survey Team, or CAST, testified Wednesday in Judge Christopher Rothgery's court that Ross' phone signal hit off a number of cellphone towers in Lorain and Cuyahoga counties on Jan. 31, 2016.
Ross, who has pleaded not guilty and is being held in Lorain County Jail on $2 million bond, told authorities he was playing basketball at South Park Recreation Center in Elyria that day, while his girlfriend Brooke Nolen said he also was taking care of her at her Princeton Avenue home that day.
Nolen said she was recovering from an injury she got the previous week — a cut on her wrist she got while drunkenly washing dishes — and was high on painkillers, marijuana and alcohol that weekend. She told police she thought Ross was at her home the whole day caring for her, but she refused to testify in court.
Horan testified that his training allowed him to look at historic cellphone data and records and place Ross' phone in the general vicinity of the murders on the night in question during the time period the Lewises were shot and killed.
Cell towers put out a "known signal," or "footprint," that spreads out in a circle, 360 degrees from the center of each tower, divided into three 120-degree sectors.
"You can't see (the footprint) because it's radio frequencies," but you can re-create the footprint on a map and show what it looks like, Horan testified.
Each cellphone chooses a tower — not necessarily the closest to it, but one with the strongest signal as determined by geography and terrain, he testified.
"Cell towers tell us where on the Earth a phone could have been," Horan said. In the case of Ross' phone, Horan said he could say that it traveled from Elyria to the southeast side of Cleveland via Interstate 90, then back again "hitting" off towers along the interstate on Jan. 31, 2016.
Ross' phone later could be placed in the general vicinity, though not the exact location, where the Lewises were killed just prior to 10 p.m. that night, Horan testified. The phone was in Elyria from 8:33 that night to 9:45 p.m. just south of Griswold Road.
The Lewises were found dead in their rental car on Fox Hill Lane near Midway Mall, putting Ross' phone in that general vicinity just before police were called for a report of shots fired and a man fleeing the area. It later was detected heading east along Ford Road in Elyria out to North Olmsted in Cuyahoga County.
Detectives testified based on their investigation that Ross discarded evidence including the 9 mm murder weapon used in the killings near the old Walmart on Ford Road. The weapon never was recovered.
According to Elyria police recordings of an interview with Ross, he also said he went to his sister's house in North Olmsted the day of the killings, arriving late that night, and said Nolen would confirm that.
Nolen's Princeton Avenue address also is farther south than Ross' phone traveled about the time of the murders, Horan said.
"There are two distinct towers farther north of that location, and the measurements are not reaching down that far to where the address is that you're talking about would be," Horan said in response to a question from Assistant Lorain County Prosecutor Laura Dezort.
For critics who say that cellular data can't be used to pinpoint the locations of cellphones exactly, Horan testified he has spent the last 10 years of his more than 25-year FBI career with the CAST team finding missing persons, kidnapped children and murder victims from Indiana to Pennsylvania to Mexico, helping local police and federal authorities. "The best response to criticism is that the proof is in the pudding. We actually use this stuff and we're not working in a vacuum," he said. "We use this every single day and so does everybody in CAST and law enforcement. It works. It's worked day-in and day-out for years."
Defense attorneys Michael Camera and Kimberly Kendall Corral will cross-examine Horan today, Rothgery said. Elyria Police Detective Sgt. Robert Whiting also is expected to testify today, and prosecutors may wrap up their case by the end of today's testimony, the judge said.
(source: The Chronicle-Telegram)
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