Suspect in Raleigh hotel killings is returned from Florida to face murder charge

Brandon Xavier Hill, one of two men charged with first-degree murder in a double killing at Raleigh hotel on Dec. 2, has been returned to Wake County from Florida and faces additional charges from Morrisville and Durham police.

An arrest warrant sworn out the day after the shootings charges Hill with the death of Dwayne Garvey.

Garvey, 28, and April Lynn Holland, 22, were found shot to death early Dec. 2 at America’s Best Value Inn at 3921 Arrow Drive, near Crabtree Valley Mall.

Seaga Edward Gillard, 28, was arrested the day after the killing and is accused of murdering Holland.

U.S. Marshals arrested Hill in Okaloosa County, Fla., on Dec. 6.

When Hill was brought to the Wake County Detention Center on Wednesday afternoon, he was served with an arrest warrant from Morrisville police charging him with first-degree kidnapping, assault by strangulation, first-degree rape, first-degree sex offense and armed robbery in an Oct. 28 incident involving a woman from Kentucky at a hotel.

After his arrest, Gillard was accused of the same offenses with the woman in the Morrisville hotel.

The Morrisville warrants accuse both Hill and Gillard of having a gun and threatening the woman in addition to wrapping a telephone cord around her neck. It was not clear if police meant that each was armed or if there was one gun.

Police have not disclosed why they believe the two men were in the Morrisville hotel with the woman a little more than a month before Garvey and Holland were killed in the Raleigh hotel.

They said Thursday that there had been some previous contact between Hill and the woman. They have not said why the woman was in Morrisville.

Durham police charge Hill broke into a building on Nov. 4 and stole a gun. It’s unclear whether that is the gun Raleigh police say was used to kill Holland and Garvey.

In the Raleigh homicides, police have not disclosed a motive for killing Holland, who was four months’ pregnant and had other children, and Garvey, who they said was the children’s father.

An older brother of Garvey said his brother died while defending the mother of his children from a man “she knew from her past, when she was much younger.”

When asking for a search warrant during their investigation, Raleigh police told a magistrate that at least one of the killings had been captured by a video camera in the hotel.

Garvey was found in a hallway and had multiple gunshot wounds, police said.

Holland was found in a second-floor room.

Police released a security-camera photo of the suspects shortly after the killings were discovered.

They also disclosed in asking for the search warrant that Hill and Garvey had been on a cell phone call with Garvey or Holland shortly before they died.

Police had been chasing Hill in a car on Dec. 4, but he was able to evade them long enough to get out of the car and run.

A woman who was driving the car that Hill was in, Brittany Jenzell Hooks, 27, was charged with fleeing to elude police and later with being an accessory after the fact of a murder. She is being held in Wake County on $1 million bail.

Gillard and Hill are being held without bail.

This story was originally published December 29, 2016 at 10:25 AM with the headline "Suspect in Raleigh hotel killings is returned from Florida to face murder charge."