Tony Covington, State’s Attorney for Charles County, announced that on Monday, May 12, 2025, Charles County Circuit Court Judge Monise A. Stephenson sentenced Elijah Bernard Barnes, 20, of Waldorf, to 45 years in prison for the second-degree murder of Rajon Lateef Jackson III, as well as related charges.
On March 7, 2025, a Charles County jury convicted Barnes of the aforementioned charges.
On January 13, 2023, officers responded to Harvest Fish Place in Waldorf after receiving a report of a shooting. When cops arrived, they discovered the 17-year-old victim on the street, suffering from four gunshot wounds to his face and neck. Rajon Lateef Jackson, III, was transferred to the hospital but died as a result of his injuries.
Investigators received information from a witness at the scene that Jackson had left his school bus and was on his way home. The suspect, subsequently identified as Barnes, summoned Jackson to his vehicle. Barnes shot Jackson four times as he approached the automobile. Barnes then left the scene. During the shoot, Barnes was driving an older model silver Toyota Corolla with a missing hubcap on the front driver’s side.
Surveillance video from a neighboring gas station shows a Toyota Corolla with a missing side hubcap entering the gas station and parking at a pump just before the murder. Barnes, the driver and single occupant, entered the establishment and was captured on video surveillance.
Approximately three minutes after leaving the petrol station, personal surveillance cameras in the vicinity filmed the Toyota Corolla in the shooting location. Barnes matched the witness’ description of the shooter.
Following the murder, investigators identified Barnes and issued a warrant for his arrest. Barnes, who had fled the state following the murder, was apprehended and arrested in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, five days later.
At sentencing, Assistant State’s Attorney John Stackhouse asked the judge for 65 years in prison. He told the judge that the victim “had a lot of people in his life that really cared about him. Rajon’s father moved Rajon here to Waldorf for a safer environment and that is just heartbreaking. A month before his murder, [Rajon] was told that he was going to be a dad. He’s never ever going to be able to meet his daughter. There is real generational trauma in this case – a little girl who will never know her dad, parents who lost a child, grandparents who lost a grandson.”
He furthered that the incident “traumatized the whole neighborhood. He is clearly a danger – executing someone in the middle of the day, when he gets off a school bus, steps away from his home. It just doesn’t get any worse than that.”
