Guilford County Sheriff’s Office talks 2020 homicide arrests

GREENSBORO, N.C. (WGHP) — Law enforcement gave an update after making arrests in a four year old homicide.

Guilford County Sheriff’s Office held a press conference on Friday afternoon to discuss charges filed against Howard Hakeem Banks and Amari Alan Jackson, both 22, in the 2020 shooting death of Anthony Kristopher King, then 20.

Banks has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder and robbery with a dangerous weapon. The sheriff’s office says that Jackson, who is already incarcerated, will be served warrants for the same charges sometime soon.

At the sheriff’s office, Sheriff Danny Rogers said he wanted to tell the community that when they or a loved one are a victim of violent crime, that they’ll always be working even if it feels as though they aren’t.

Banks has been given a $1 million bond, according to a deputy at the press conference.

“For four years, an investigation commenced and after four years our officers were able to establish probable cause and make an arrest,” Captain Holden of the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office said.

They will be working with the Department of Corrections and District Attorney’s office to file the charges against Jackson.

Holden said that tips from the community can sometimes come in slow, but are important tools to help solve cases and bring closure to families, saying specifically that with this case it was a “culmination” of information over the four years that helped them identify Banks and Jackson, but they were unable to provide specifics about the nature of those tips or the investigation.

Background

King was found dead on the morning of Oct. 8, 2020, from obvious traumatic injuries after Guilford County Sheriff’s Office deputies came to investigate a reported assault.

The investigation, which took nearly four years to yield arrests, was aided by 10 anonymous tips submitted through the Greensboro Guilford Crime Stoppers program. These tips were critical in identifying Banks and Jackson as suspects.

For King’s family, the arrests offer a mix of relief and ongoing grief. His mother, Kristy King, expressed her heartbreak in a statement:

“My emotions are all over the place … My son was my best friend … They took that away from me. I wake up to the same nightmare every day. My son is gone forever. They took a beautiful person away with a good heart … There are no words really to describe the pain I’m in every minute of the day … I’m glad they finally made an arrest, and I have prayed for this every day because my son deserves justice,” she said.

Victim Services Coordinator for the Greensboro Police Department Mary Nero provided additional perspective on the arrest and the ongoing pain families endure.

“A lot of people think … there’s been an arrest in the case, so there is going to be this immediate sense of relief and closure. And that may be the case, but families and mothers will come back and say that there is no such thing as closure. You will never get closure out of this,” Nero said.

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