The state’s case against a man accused of committing murder during a drug deal took an important step forward on Tuesday of last week. Following a preliminary hearing, Associate Circuit Judge Mason Gebhardt found the state had sufficient evidence to move the case forward and bound the case over to Circuit Court where it will be heard by Presiding Circuit 14 Judge Scott Hayes.

Alfredo Demario Hicks, Jr.

Howard County Prosecuting Attorney Deborah Riekhof questioned three law enforcement officers involved in the case during Tuesday’s hearing. Fayette police chief Jeff Oswald testified that he responded to a call of a shooting and witnessed Hicks running away from the scene. Hicks allegedly shot Turner in the side of the head while buying marijuana from him. The murder took place inside Turner’s blue Toyota Carolla on Hackberry Street.

Oswald was unable to apprehend Hicks at the scene. He later activated the Mid-Missouri Major Case Squad and a manhunt ensued.

Oswald testified that information gained from Turner’s mobile phone later during the investigation, identifed Hicks’s phone number, which was used to pinpoint his possible location.

Hicks was taken into custody at a residence on South Park Avenue in Fayette the following day, December 31.

A detective with the Boone County Sheriff’s Department, Anthony Perkins, testified that Hicks admitted during an interview in the Howard County Jail that he “killed” Turner. In that interview, Hicks said he shot Turner in the head with a small black Smith & Wesson .380 handgun.

Initially Hicks told investigators that he had thrown the gun, along with the pants he was wearing at the time of the murder, into a lake. However, during an interview the following day, he admitted that the gun was actually hidden in a piece of clothing between an air mattress and a wall at the residence in which he was staying on West Davis Street in Fayette. That’s where police recovered the gun.

Perkins told the court that the gun was stolen and that Hicks had admitted that he stole it from a vehicle at a used car lot in Fayette weeks prior.

Detective Perkins also explained to the court that a third person was in Turner’s car at the time of the shooting. In the moments after the shooting, Turner’s girlfriend, Ashayla Foster, was ordered to get out of the car and enter a nearby abandoned house. Hicks allegedly followed her in and told her that he would not kill her. She later told police she went to Casey’s General Store and got a ride home to Columbia. She allegedly told investigators that Hicks gave her some money with the understanding she was to stay quiet.

According to testimony, Hicks then returned to the car to retrieve the approximately half-pound of marijuana. He rolled up the car windows, took the keys and threw them in a creek. That’s apparently when he heard the siren on Oswald’s patrol car and fled the scene.

Audrain County Sheriff’s Detective William Femrite, the third and final witness heard Tuesday, testified that he performed an extraction on Hicks’s mobile phone. On it, he found internet searches for “can police trace .380 bullets,” whether it is better to “shoot a .380 close up or far away” and “how to teach yourself to drive.” Another search query just six hours after the killing asked how much prison time a person would get for a homicide.

Femrite also told the court that during a Facebook chat allegedly between Hicks and another man, Hicks, using the social media alias “HGE Mario,” admitted that he “killed someone.” Hicks’s middle name is Demario.

During the more than two-hour hearing, Hicks spoke only once when he was addressed by Judge Gebhardt. He sat beside his attorney, often with his eyes closed and his head nodding in rhythm, as if he were listening to music only he could hear. He is due back in Howard County court March 18 for an arraignment before Judge Hayes.