CONTRIBUTED BY
THE OPELIKA POLICE DEPARTMENT
OPELIKA —
The Opelika Police Department has arrested two individuals related to an unsolved homicide from 2000. On April 23, 2000, the Opelika Police Department and rescue personnel responded to a call of an unresponsive 4-month-old child in the 400 block of Raintree Street. Jarquavious Hughley, who at the time was in the care of his mother Tomeika Hughley and her associate Bobby Beaty, was deceased upon arrival. An autopsy was performed by the state’s medical examiner who ruled the manner of death to be homicide.
At the time of the incident, no charges were filed. Opelika police detectives routinely review older, unsolved cases, to see if any new information is available.
In this particular case, detectives reviewed the facts they had with the Lee County District Attorney’s Office and found sufficient evidence to present the case to a Lee County Grand Jury.
In April of 2022, the case was presented to the Grand Jury who returned an indictment against 43-year-old Hughley and 42-year-old Beaty, charging them each with murder. After the indictment, the U.S. Marshals arrested Beaty in Opelika on Aug. 3, 2022, and Hughley in Daytona Beach, Florida, where she was extradited back to Alabama on Aug. 27.
In addition to the charge of murder, Hughley also faces a pending, unrelated charge of Chemical Endangerment of a Child from a separate case.