SBI searches former Four Oaks officer’s home in Garner murder case

State Bureau of Investigation agents searched the home of a former Four Oaks police officer in Benson on March 31, a step that pushed the unsolved Garner killing of Joshua Matthew Davis back into the center of a case that has long frustrated his family and investigators.

The officer is described in court documents and reporting as a person of interest, and no charges had been filed. Authorities seized an iPhone and a laptop after acting on a tip from the officer’s former spouse, according to the warrant. The same warrant said the officer was uncooperative and gave numerous inconsistencies in statements in 2004 and again in 2025, details that now give the case a sharper evidentiary edge than a simple anniversary appeal.

Davis was 16 when he died on Jan. 6, 2004. He had been walking with his cousin in a residential neighborhood off Hall Boulevard in Garner when the cousin briefly went back home to retrieve something. A few minutes later, Davis was found bleeding and was taken to Wake Medical Center, where he later died. By 2007, investigators had concluded he had been hit by a car, but Garner police are now pursuing the case as a homicide and say they are not limiting themselves to a hit-and-run theory.

That shift matters for Wake County residents because it marks a break from the old explanation that had stood for years. Garner police have said they are still reviewing the large case file and recently found new information worth pursuing, a sign that the inquiry is no longer locked into the assumptions that followed the death. Det. Michael Hammerstein said in earlier remarks, “We’re investigating it as a homicide, whether a hit-and-run or a murder.”

The case has drawn repeated public appeals over the years. In 2010, a tipster’s account suggested a possible assault involving a baseball bat, but that lead did not produce charges. In 2018, Davis’s mother, Judy Creech of Garner, said the family still had no answers. Davis would have turned 38 in 2026, a stark reminder of how long this case has remained open and how much now hinges on whether the search in Benson leads to evidence strong enough to move from suspicion to prosecution.