2 from eastern NC charged with conspiracy in former ECU player’s Raleigh killing

Police on Wednesday arrested two men from eastern North Carolina on murder conspiracy charges in the June slaying of former ECU football player Anthony Domonique Lennon, though no one has been accused yet of the killing itself.

A woman was charged Wednesday with being an accessory, with police saying in an arrest warrant that she provided a phony alibi for one of the men by telling detectives he was somewhere else when Lennon, 24, was shot to death, behind the Bahama Breeze restaurant on Wake Forest Road.

Police have said Lennon was the target of 10 or more gunshots that were fired about 9:45 p.m. on June 23, a Friday night.

One of the two men arrested Wednesday night is Wantavius Burney Jackson, 25, of Kinston. Police took him into custody about 9 p.m. after stopping a car he was in at Capital Boulevard and Trust Drive, two blocks from detective headquarters on Greens Dairy Road, according to arrest records.

Clifton Jason Spellman III, 25, of Greenville was charged at detective headquarters about a half-hour before Jackson’s arrest.

Shortly before Spellman’s arrest, Stephanie Chayanne Owens, 20, of Greenville was accused of giving Spellman an alibi by saying he was somewhere other than where police believe he was when Lennon was gunned down. Arrest records show her being taken into custody at police headquarters on Six Forks Road.

Arrest warrants for all three were sworn out Tuesday.

The charges against Spellman and Jackson state that two other men, Ashanti Bennett, 33, and Jamar Allen, 35, were part of the conspiracy. They have not been arrested for that, however.

Bennett was arrested in Raleigh in April on a charge of communicating threats, and he gave booking officers a Greenville address then.

When Allen was arrested last year on a charge of not showing up in court for a DWI case, he gave a Raleigh address.

Spellman and Jackson were held in lieu of $1 million bail each. Owens was held in lieu of $500,000.

Police were alerted to Lennon’s killing by a 911 call from a passerby who said she saw men fighting in the Bahama Breeze parking lot and then heard and saw shots.

“I saw them fighting and I saw flashes, like sparks,” she said in the call, which police released a few days after Lennon died.

Lennon was a defensive back at ECU from 2011 to 2015.

After his death, teammates from Lennon’s high school football team in Virginia set up a fund to pay for his son’s college expenses.

Lennon was from Suffolk, Va.

This story was originally published October 26, 2017 at 11:30 AM with the headline "2 from eastern NC charged with conspiracy in former ECU player’s Raleigh killing."