VERDICT: Guilty of murder in 2024 Romy Avenue double homicide
- Jamie Duffy
- Mar 20
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 21
ALLEN COUNTY, Ind. ---There’s a community of boys who’ve spent time together at ACJC (Allen County Juvenile Center) who are continuing to gather in Indiana prisons, their lives cut short by juvenile waywardness.
One of those is Dionee White, 23, who apparently got swept up in the local gang culture and was convicted Friday of being one of two shooters in a double homicide on Jan. 29, 2024.
One of the victims, Lamarion “LD” Bailey, was a star football player his sophomore year at Snider High School; Dionee played basketball and football at North Side.
Adaija Armani Okey, just 17, had a full ride to Marian University to study business and was an aspiring model.
This week White sat almost motionless in trial, never missing a word, but never showing any emotion as his attorney, Tyree Barfield, worked to discredit the prosecution’s case.
Chief Counsel Tesa Helge and Deputy Prosecutor Alik Hall pieced together a web of circumstantial evidence that turned on a couple of factors.
Testimony from a jailhouse snitch who spent two weeks as the cellmate of Dionee testified that Dionee had told him the hit was planned and that he left his cell phone at home so the cops couldn’t track him through geolocation.
White reportedly told the older man that he and Lamarion had been friends, but there was a “falling out” after someone got robbed.
The snitch said Dionee, 23, had borrowed a car - actually it was borrowed at a cost of $100 - to go shoot Lamarion who was sitting in Okey’s silver Hyundai with the window down. Lamarion apparently had a couple of vapes he was gong to sell or give them, not expecting a rain of bullets at 7:57 p.m.
Read more trial coverage here:
Text messages that exist between Bailey and the alleged accomplice, Uronne Washington,18, show that Bailey was waiting on them, Helge said Friday in opening arguments.
A 16-year-old, C.K., preoccupied with listening to music in the back seat, had no idea what was about to go down until he heard gunshots - seven of them - and saw the muzzle flash.
He exited the Hyundai, let out a cry of grief, called 911 and started to sob. This was heard on audio and video tape played in court that left some in the gallery emotional and reaching for tissues.
Adaija Armani Okey and Lamarion Bailey
Bailey, 18, lived with the survivor and his mother and the survivor called him his brother, Helge said in opening arguments.
Helge and Hall said it was a cheap move to blame Jayden Morris, the football player who made it out of South Side High School and on to the gridiron at University of Saint Francis, because he was killed in gun violence, too.
But that’s what Barfield seized upon. Only a week after Bailey and Okey were shot to death, Morris was killed on Feb. 3 in a multiple shooting on Rivermet Drive. That shooting sent three to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries and Morris, dead.
“They haven’t pieced s—-t together,” Barfield blazed at one point in his closing argument to which Judge Fran Gull told him “watch your language.”
Barfield told the jury the prosecution had “tunnel vision,” and that they had “fixated” on the idea that Dionee White was involved in the shootings. He even stood in front of their table briefly, waving them all with his hand until there were objections.
“They have tunnel vision,” Barfield said looking at them. “This whole team.”
There was more to convict Washington whose phone was tracked by Fort Wayne detectives to the shooting scene and through his text messages with Bailey, Barfield said.
“You see two silhouettes running to and from the car,” Barfield argued. C.K. “didn’t testify he saw anybody and he didn’t testify that to the police.” It was C.K.’s mother who fingered White, but she has her own set of problems with the law, Barfield said, touching on a sensitive issue.
He wasn’t done. The shooting at Rivermet Drive, just a few days after the murders of the young couple, was too quick to be anything but retaliatory and could easily implicate Morris who was friends with Washington, also known as “Woo."
“Think of all the people at Rivermet,” Barfield said. White was not there.
“Woo was the hub who was clearly hanging with Jayden, (another individual), and the rest of the group.” Fort Wayne police, Barfield complained, did no follow-up.
Independently, The Probable Cause learned that the shootings involved members of two rival gangs, BMG and BSG.
Barfield said there was no dispute that White had hired the car.
“In certain cultures, it’s customary to rent out your car,” he said. In this case, White paid $100. It was no surprise his DNA was on the steering wheel, but so was the DNA of numerous unidentified individuals who had borrowed the car.
The prosecution had a point, however, that the car was rented just long enough to carry out the shootings and then it was returned. Later, around 9:30 p.m., there was a phone call between White and “Woo,” but the defense argued that you don’t bother calling someone you are with at the time.
And Dionee left his phone at home.
Comments