Ramon White is a teen killer from Missouri who was convicted of the murder of Dwight Henderson
According to court documents Ramon White would attempt to carjack Dwight Henderson at a St. Louis gas station however a struggle ensued that saw the victim shot and killed
Ramon White would be arrested and convicted
This is not the first time that Ramon White has been involved in a murder description for when he was fifteen years old he was charged in the murder of thirteen year old Anthony Wilson Jr however the charges were later dropped due to lack of evidence
Ramon White Case
The family of Dwight Henderson has for years believed his death at the hands of a man trying to steal his car at a Berkeley gas station could have been prevented.
Just before midnight on July 11, 2020, Henderson went into the Petro-Mart gas station on Airport Road to buy a few bottles of water. He had worked a shift that day managing Amazon delivery dispatchers, then spent some time with his fiancée and their two kids — a newborn girl and a 1-year-old boy.
Surveillance video played in a trial this week showed that when Henderson stood at the convenience store counter, with his rental car running in the lot, he spotted a man trying to drive off in the car. Henderson ran outside and tried to grab the robber’s gun. Within seconds, the 32-year-old father was shot once in the chest.
A St. Louis County jury deliberated for about six hours on Thursday before finding Ramon White, 21, of Pine Lawn, guilty of second-degree murder, attempted robbery and two weapons offenses.
Henderson’s family was relieved by the verdict. But they say White should have been held accountable years ago.
Three years before killing Henderson, White was charged in the murder of a 13-year-old boy, Anthony Wilson Jr., near a playground in St. Louis’ Wells Goodfellow neighborhood. White was 15 at the time but was charged as an adult.
St. Louis prosecutors dropped all charges in February 2019, the same day his trial was set to begin. Former St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner’s office said key witnesses were not available to testify.
“Most people don’t get second chances, but Ramon did. And what did he do with it?” Shayla Powell, Henderson’s fiancée and mother of his two children said after the verdict Thursday. “I want to forgive because I know he probably wasn’t raised right, but he had the chance to change. Now I have to be a mother to two kids alone.”
White, who was 17 when his murder charge was dropped, was charged again just two months after his release with stealing cars out of driveways in St. Charles County
And he was out on bond in those cases when he shot and killed Henderson. The Bail Project, a nonprofit that helps people who can’t afford their cash bonds, paid $1,000 — 10% of White’s $10,000 bond — to bail him out on the St. Charles County cases in October 2019.
The nonprofit has faced scrutiny for cases where the organization posted bail money for defendants who are released on bond without their own money on the line and who go on to be charged with violent crimes. Most recently, in Clayton last month, a man who was bailed out by the nonprofit on several pending felonies is accused of killing a man who confronted several people who were breaking into his wife’s car.
The nonprofit argued on Friday that the purpose of bail is to ensure that defendants follow bond conditions and show up for court dates — not as a means to keep someone imprisoned indefinitely before trial.
“These release conditions were set by a judge with more information than anyone else, including access to all of the details of Mr. White’s current case as well as his previous history,” The Bail Project said in a statement. “Nearly a year before this horrible tragedy, when it was clear that the only reason Mr. White was being held in jail was that his family was too poor to afford this amount or a bail bonds agent, The Bail Project agreed to help.”
Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Benjamin Kloos told the jury during closing statements Thursday that White didn’t succeed in stealing Henderson’s car.
“I wish he would have,” Kloos said. Instead, “he stole a lot more than that.”
White’s public defender, Jay Kanzler, argued that prosecutors never proved White was the shooter captured on the surveillance footage. He suggested people in the car with White might have been the culprits.
Prosecutors presented DNA evidence tying White to Henderson’s rental car, footage of a police interrogation with White and social media messages that showed White trying to sell a gun two days after the killing.
A break in the case
St. Louis County police Detective Robert Bates, the lead investigator in Henderson’s killing, testified during the three-day trial that a crime bulletin he sent to police across the region led to a key lead in the case.
The bulletin included still images from the gas station’s surveillance cameras. St. Louis Officer Andrei Nikolov, who also testified, contacted Bates to say he recognized the man as White, whom he’d interacted with a few months prior.
The St. Louis County crime lab analyzed the DNA on a fingerprint from the door handle of Henderson’s car and found there was a 300-billion-to-one chance it was anyone but White.
White’s attorney, Kanzler, attempted to call a statistician to testify as an expert questioning the data in the DNA analysis. But Circuit Judge Nancy Watkins McLaughlin ruled against allowing him to take the stand, finding he wasn’t qualified as a DNA expert.
St. Louis County police also got a warrant for data connected to a Facebook page they believed belonged to Ramon White, under the name “Hothead Ramon.”
The page included multiple attempts to sell a 9 mm gun — the type used to kill Henderson — within a few days of the shooting. The page also had a message saying White was in a Kia about four hours before the shooting. The shooter in the footage arrived with a group of people in a blue Kia Optima.
St. Louis County police never found the Kia or the murder weapon. Police did find a Kia Optima that had been set on fire and abandoned within days of the killing, but they weren’t able to confirm if it was the same car, prosecutors told the jury.
Ramon White was arrested in his grandmother’s Pine Lawn home nine days after Henderson’s death. In the home, police found a padded vest marked with the word “Icon” and a camouflage facemask resembling the clothes worn by Henderson’s killer.
St. Louis County Detective Matt Levy interviewed White soon after his arrest. The recording was played for the jury.
Levy asked if Ramon White knew anything about a shooting at the gas station.
“Maybe,” White said.
Ramon White then described to Levy common tactics for stealing cars. Levy asked if White knew who killed Henderson.
“I know what snitches do,” White told him. “Snitches die.”
Ramon White initially denied being at the gas station. But when Levy confronted him with the surveillance stills, he admitted the shooter looked like him.
“Is this you in the picture?” Levy asked.
“Mm-hm,” White said.
Levy soon told Ramon White he was charged with murder and left the room. White was recorded putting his head in his hands before lying on the ground and, within a few minutes, falling asleep.
Ramon White’s attorney, Kanzler, argued that White referred to getting high in the interview and didn’t seem “with it.”
But the prosecutor, Kloos, compared White’s denials to a child with pink frosting on their face who denies eating sweets.
“Mr. White has pink frosting all over his face and all over his hands,” Kloos said.
‘The biggest loss is theirs’
Henderson’s sister, Sharay Hogans, said her brother was a hardworking protector of his family. He taught himself multiple languages and started his own detailing and car wash business for Amazon delivery vehicles, on top of managing dispatch for delivery drivers.
“He was an amazing man and a great father,” she said.
Another sister, Shabreca Hogans, said Henderson was a role model to her two sons
“He taught them to throw footballs, how to ride a bike and how to skate,” she said. “He’s one of the only men in our family that was around. He was determined to break the statistic, to be there for his kids. The biggest loss is theirs.”
Sharay Hogans said her family places the most blame on Ramon White but also questions why his previous murder charge was dropped. The St. Louis circuit attorney at the time, Gardner, resigned in May amid attempts by the Missouri Legislature and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey to remove her from office over mishandled cases and management of the office.
“If he’d gone to trial and been convicted, maybe that would have taught him a lesson,” Sharay Hogans said. “Or maybe not. Maybe he is just someone that was never going to stop.”
Ramon White picked up another felony charge as he awaited his trial for Henderson’s killing. He was one of three men charged with first-degree assault in October 2021 and accused of attacking a fellow inmate in the St. Louis County jail.
Ramon White is accused of punching a man without provocation, beating him with a broom handle and stomping him in the head, with the help of the other men.
The 45-second attack caught on surveillance video ended as jail staff responded to the exercise area, records show. The man was hospitalized for more than a week with severe head fractures and brain hemorrhaging.
Ramon White still faces multiple pending felony cases in St. Charles County and St. Louis County. He hasn’t yet been sentenced for Henderson’s murder.
Ramon White News
A suburban St. Louis man who narrowly avoided prosecution as a teen in the killing of a 13-year-old has been convicted of fatally shooting a father of two during an attempted carjacking.
Ramon White, 21, of Pine Lawn, was found guilty Thursday of second-degree murder, attempted robbery and two weapons offenses in the July 2020 death of Dwight Henderson, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.
It all happened after Henderson, a 32-year-old manager of Amazon delivery dispatchers, went to a gas station. While inside buying water, he spotted a man trying to drive off with his rental car and ran outside. He then tried to grab the robber’s gun and was shot once in the chest.
White’s public defender, Jay Kanzler, suggested people in the car with White might have been the culprits. Prosecutors presented DNA evidence tying White to Henderson’s rental car, footage of a police interrogation with White and social media messages that showed White trying to sell a gun two days after the killing.
Three years before killing Henderson, White was charged in the killing of a 13-year-old boy, Anthony Wilson Jr., near a St. Louis playground. White was 15 at the time but was charged as an adult.
St. Louis prosecutors dropped all charges in February 2019, the same day his trial was set to begin. Former St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner’s office said key witnesses were not available to testify.
“Most people don’t get second chances, but Ramon did. And what did he do with it?” Shayla Powell, Henderson’s fiancée and mother of his two children, said after the verdict. Henderson’s daughter was just a newborn and his son just 1 when he was killed.
Ramon White was charged again just two months after his release with stealing cars out of driveways in St. Charles County. He was out on bond in those cases when he shot and killed Henderson.
The Bail Project, a nonprofit that helps people who can’t afford their cash bonds, paid $1,000 — 10% of Ramon White’s $10,000 bond — to bail him out on the St. Charles County cases in October 2019. The nonprofit has faced criticism over crimes committed by other people after posting their bond.
The nonprofit argued on Friday that the purpose of bail is to ensure that defendants follow bond conditions and show up for court dates — not as a means to keep someone imprisoned indefinitely before trial.
https://apnews.com/article/boy-killed-charges-dropped-3d7fba3d0526539b72344210e7b44efc
