Investigators searched the officer’s home and placed the officer on leave as they revisit the death of 16-year-old Joshua Davis.
GARNER, NC — A Four Oaks police officer has been identified as a person of interest in the 2004 killing of Garner teenager Joshua Davis, a development that has pushed new life into a case that sat unsolved for more than two decades.
The case centers on the death of Davis, 16, who was found badly injured along Hall Boulevard on Jan. 6, 2004, and later died. For years, investigators publicly described the case as a vehicle strike, but police now say they are treating it as a homicide and are following new leads with help from the State Bureau of Investigation. The officer has not been charged, and authorities have not publicly laid out a full theory of what they believe happened that night.
The latest turn came after investigators searched the home of the Four Oaks officer near Benson at the end of March and later confirmed the officer had been placed on administrative leave. Four Oaks police said the leave began while Garner police and the SBI pursued an active investigation. The officer’s name has not been broadly released in news reports because no criminal charge has been filed. According to court records described in recent coverage, investigators have spent months revisiting statements tied to the case and comparing them with older information that had been sitting in files for years. That work appears to have accelerated in late 2025 and early 2026, after Garner police publicly renewed attention on the killing and said they were reopening lines of inquiry that had not been fully exhausted. The new focus has given Davis’ family, and many in Garner, the first visible sign in years that the case may be moving toward answers.
Davis was 16 when he was killed. The SBI’s unsolved homicide page says he and his cousin were walking through a Garner neighborhood on the evening of Jan. 6, 2004. The boys separated briefly when the cousin went back to retrieve something from a nearby house. When he returned a few minutes later, Davis was lying on the side of Hall Boulevard, bleeding from a head injury. He was taken to Wake Medical Center, where he later died. In 2007, Garner police said a reconstruction review had led them to conclude Davis had been struck by a vehicle. Even then, the case remained unsettled because investigators could not say whether what happened was an accident or an intentional act. More recently, Garner investigators said they were no longer limiting the case to one theory. Det. Michael Hammerstein told ABC11 in January that police were investigating it as a homicide and were looking at all possibilities, a sign that the department believed the older explanation no longer answered the hardest questions in the file.
Those questions took on new weight when court documents described a former spouse of the officer giving investigators information years ago and then repeating that account in a more recent interview. News reports on the warrants say the tip first reached investigators in 2010. The more recent records say detectives interviewed the officer in September 2025 and later found what the warrant described as numerous inconsistencies between the officer’s earlier statements and what was said in 2025. The same reporting says the former spouse was interviewed again in November and gave a statement investigators viewed as consistent with the original tip. The warrants also say the officer knew the former spouse had implicated them in the case. Authorities have not publicly released the full affidavit in broad detail, and they have not said whether anyone else besides the officer remains under close scrutiny. They also have not publicly explained whether they believe a vehicle, a weapon, or more than one person was involved. Those gaps remain central to the case.
The victim’s mother, Judy Creech, has said the new developments were jarring because the person now under scrutiny was not a stranger to her son. In interviews with WRAL, Creech said the officer and Davis knew each other when they were young and that the officer was present around the family after the killing, even signing the funeral book. “We want this to come to an end,” Creech said as she described the long wait for progress. Her account has added an emotional layer to a case that already carried deep local memory. Davis was remembered as a well-liked teenager, and his death lingered in Garner as one of those crimes people never fully forgot, even as the official trail grew cold. The idea that someone known to the victim could be tied to the case has only sharpened public interest. Still, relatives have said hope comes with caution because they have seen promising moments before without an arrest or public resolution.
Investigators’ recent steps show the case is now in an evidence-gathering stage rather than a charging stage. Court records described in multiple reports say agents seized an iPhone and a laptop when they searched the officer’s home. Such a search does not prove guilt, but it does show investigators persuaded a judge there was enough evidence to justify taking a closer look at the officer’s devices and records. The warrants also say the officer resisted a follow-up interview and wanted any meeting to happen at the Four Oaks Police Department. Investigators said the interview needed to take place somewhere else. According to the records, the officer later said they would think about it and contact the SBI, but that follow-up did not happen. Authorities then moved ahead with additional investigative steps, including a review of the officer’s use of CJLeads, a law enforcement database that contains personal and criminal history information. Public reporting has not shown that any charge tied to database use has been filed, and officials have not said what, if anything, that review uncovered.
What happens next is likely to depend on forensics, witness credibility and whether investigators can turn old suspicion into evidence strong enough for court. The SBI has said only that it is actively investigating new leads in the cold case and will release more information when it can. Garner police have not announced an arrest timeline, and no hearing has been scheduled because no defendant has been charged. That leaves the case in a familiar but delicate position: further along than it had been in years, but still short of the moment when prosecutors would have to state exactly what they think happened on Hall Boulevard. For now, the public record shows a searched home, seized electronics, an officer on leave, and sworn assertions that older and newer statements do not line up. The next major milestone is likely to be either a public charging document, a new warrant filing that reveals more of the investigative theory, or an official statement clearing the officer if the evidence does not hold.
Author note: Last updated April 23, 2026.