The Mobile man who is being held without bond following an Aniah’s Law hearing on Thursday, faces a murder charge in Mississippi stemming from a parking lot shooting that occurred a few months before he allegedly shot four people at a downtown Mobile club and was a participant in a shooting at the Walmart store on the I-65 Beltline.
Darrius Rowser, 19, of Mobile, is one of two Mobile area teens accused of murdering a 36-year-old man at a D’Iberville casino parking lot in September. The other is Karmelo Derks, 18, of Prichard. Authorities issued the murder charges last week.
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“We had a retainer (in Mobile County) to hold him for us in case he bonds out,” D’Iberville Police Chief Shannon Nobles said Friday. “I understand there are multiple charges in Mobile he will have to answer to before he answers to us.”
Rowser is not getting out of Mobile County Jail anytime soon. A judge ordered him held with no bond following a hearing on Thursday, utilizing Alabama’s new Aniah’s Law that prevents him from receiving bond or the possibility of an early release from jail while his court cases proceed.
“He is being held until his trial date,” said Mobile Police Chief Paul Prine. “To be such a young man … he’s proven quickly to be a menace to society and he’s not able to have the appropriate discipline to conduct himself properly among law abiding citizens.”
Rowser was the second high-profile suspect to have bond withheld by a judge following an Aniah’s Law hearing. Thomas Earl Thomas, 22, of Mobile, who is accused of murder after shooting into a crowd on New Year’s Eve in downtown Mobile, was denied bond under Aniah’s Law following a tense January 12 hearing before Judge Spiro Cheriogotis.
Thomas’s bond was withheld despite his attorney arguing that his client had no prior convictions or arrests.
Rowser is accused of three major crimes that all occurred within one month:
- He is a suspect in the November 26 shooting at the Paparazzi Club on Dauphin Street in downtown Mobile. Four people were shot and injured, and Rowser faces an attempted murder charge and multiple charges of assault, burglary and shooting into unoccupied and occupied dwellings.
- He is the suspect of a December 16 home invasion in which three men forced their way into a home in the 2000 block of Dukes Avenue. The three men assaulted one victim, fired shots at another and stole property as they fled the scene.
- The Walmart shooting occurred at the store’s checkout. Rowser and Derks are two of the suspects who were involved during a confrontation with another group. The shooting left an innocent shopper with a gunshot to the chest while she was holding an infant child.
Prine said he believes Aniah’s Law is meant to keep suspected criminals who are at a high risk of reoffending in jail so they cannot reoffend before their court cases are adjudicated.
Aniah’s Law is an amendment to Alabama’s State Constitution that voters overwhelmingly approved in November. It gives a judge the discretion to revoke bond under an expanded list of criminal charges, including murder and burglary and robbery in the first degree. Before Aniah’s Law, only capital murder suspects could be outright denied bond.
Defense attorneys in Mobile County, in recent weeks, have expressed concerns over the law. Chase Dearman, who represents Thomas, said he felt the concept of the new law removes a suspect’s rights to innocence until proven guilty.
“This is America,” Dearman said after Thomas’s hearing. “You do not get your right to be free taken away unless you face a jury. Except in Alabama (where) probably cause is enough.”