2024 homicide was planned, defendant allegedly tells 'snitch'

ALLEN COUNTY, Ind. ---When Lamarion “LD” Bailey was a sophomore at Snider High School here in Fort Wayne, he started in every single football game, playing corner.

His mother wears a locket around her neck, both sides with a photo of her son, one in his football uniform.

How he got from a star football player at a school known for its strong gridiron program to shot dead at 18 sitting in the passenger seat of his beautiful girlfriend’s car makes people shake their heads.

Stories like this fill the courtrooms of America, the result of teenage resentment over stupid stuff, the lure of guns and street gangs.

Dionee White, now 23, is on trial this week in Allen Superior Court for the murder of Bailey and Adaija Armani Okey, 17. First responders found them shot to death inside Okey's silver Hyundai in the 700 block of Romy Avenue around 8 p.m. on Jan. 29, 2024.

The families of the deceased are there and, up until Thursday, some of White’s friends who got kicked out Wednesday after loud yelling and arguing erupted outside the courtroom.

Read Tuesday's article here:

https://www.theprobablecause.com/post/sitting-ducks-accused-killer-on-trial-for-car-shooting-on-romy-avenue

Along with them apparently went the smell of weed that one courtroom observer described as “pungent.” Security opined that some of these folks were partaking in the men’s public bathroom downstairs.

Thursday, the jury found out that the shell casings picked up at the homicide scene and projectiles recovered from the victims’ bodies indicated there were two 9mm guns used.

Uronne Washington, 18, has also been charged in the double homicide as the other shooter. His trial is scheduled for July.

Not atypical at all is the fact that no guns tied to the homicides were recovered. Fort Wayne has three rivers to choose from and other opportunities to ditch a gun.

There are no text messages or rap lyrics that were allowed as evidence, although an inside source tells The Probable Cause that rap tunes still exist on YouTube with many of the members from the two involved gangs - BMG and BSG - on view.

Lead homicide detective Ben MacDonald did unearth phone records that show White’s phone was left at his home in the 600 block of 5th Street for three hours that reveal perhaps the cunning of someone planning such a shooting.

Between 6:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., there’s nothing, but there are phone calls to and from Washington prior to and after the shootings, MacDonald testified.

Some of the most compelling testimony came from White’s cellmate at the Allen County jail while they were stuck in G block, locked down for 22 hours a day. 

For two weeks in October 2024, months after the Jan. 29, 2024 shooting, White confessed he planned to kill “LD” who’d been a close friend and spilled other crucial details, the inmate said.

“He talked about “LD”, how they used to get along and had a falling out after a friend got robbed,” the former inmate said.

What about the girl? White reportedly told him that “she shouldn’t have been there,” a cold response if there ever was one.

There was another young kid in the back seat that seems to have a mysterious role in all of this and probably nothing good. He reluctantly testified on  Tuesday on the first day of the trial and gave little information. 

His story is that he heard nothing until the gunshots and saw the muzzle flashes because he was listening to music on his headphones. He told detectives he didn’t have a clue who Lamarion had been talking to.

He ducked so as not to get shot and then escaped by a car door, he testified. 

The inmate said White and others offered to pay the survivor “if he didn’t testify," which makes one wonder where that money was coming from. But he did testify and got a better deal on his own charges, it was revealed in court Tuesday.

The inmate - some would call him a snitch - said White explained they needed a car and that he left his phone at home on purpose.

“They’re getting smarter,” one detective noted outside court testimony, because these kids know there’s such a thing as cell phone mapping.

The inmate had written all the details White told him in a letter to the Allen County prosecutor in November 2024, but on the stand his memory faltered as he sat in front of judge, jury, White himself, the prosecution and all the people packed on one side of the gallery. The three front rows on the jury side are roped off and the other two rows behind make it difficult to  see and hear.

To jog his memory,Chief Counsel Tesa Helge pulled up the handwritten letter on a tablet and presented it to him, deputy prosecutor Alik Hall assisting. 

The inmate did recall that White told him White’s mom’s car was involved. Fort Wayne detectives discovered through street surveillance that the borrowed Cadillac used in the homicide then traveled to its owner where a “swap” took place. The swap car belonged to White’s mother.

White said he would blame it on someone else, according to the inmate. That was his own cousin, Jayden Morris, a freshman football player at the University of Saint Francis who was killed less than a week later in a triple shooting on Rivermet Avenue. The other two survived.

Morris,19, was a standout football and basketball player at South Side, according to news reports. His homicide has not been solved.

White’s attorney, Tyree Barfield, didn’t waste time pointing out that the “snitch” had something to gain from his testimony.

“You refrained from disclosing anything about your own case,” he said indignantly. The former inmate faces up to 18 years on a gun possession charge and has yet to be sentenced. However, it was said in court testimony that he’s likely looking at only a couple of years and is walking free right now.

Tomorrow Helge and Hall will present closing arguments for the state; Barfield will plead not guilty for his client.