<p>DA: Drugs ‘common denominator’ in Harvard slaying
May 22, 2009 10:05 AM Email| Comments (19)| Text size – + By John R. Ellement and Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff </p>
<p>CAMBRIDGE – A “drug rip-off” over a pound of marijuana and $1,000 in cash led to the fatal shooting this week of a man inside a residence hall at Harvard University, according to Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr.</p>
<p>The victim, Justin Cosby, 21, had been selling drugs to students at Harvard and went to Kirkland House on Monday afternoon with the marijuana and money, Leone said today at a press conference at Cambridge police headquarters. Three men traveled to Cambridge from New York City with the intention of robbing Cosby, he said. </p>
<p>One of the men, Jabrai Jordan Copney, is scheduled to be arraigned today in Cambridge District Court in connection with the killing. The other two men returned to New York City and remain at large, Leone said. </p>
<p>“It was that encounter between the four men that went bad,” Leone said, adding, “The common denominator that led to the intent to rip-off Justin Cosby of both money and drugs was that Justin and Jordan were known to each other through Harvard students.” </p>
<p>Leone did not release the names of the two female students at Harvard who were the nexus between Cosby and Copney. They have not been charged with a crime. </p>
<p>Police recovered one pound of marijuana and $1,000 in cash near where Cosby was shot and have also found the handgun used in the shooting, Leone said. Cosby was shot inside the J entryway of Kirkland House around 5 p.m. After being hit, he ran up Dunster Street to Mount Auburn Street, where he collapsed. He died Tuesday morning in Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.</p>
<p>Copney has been charged in connection with the killing but he has not been identified as the person who actually pulled the trigger. Because the other two men returned to New York City, there is not an ongoing security threat at Harvard, Leone said. Investigators are working with the New York City Police Department to apprehend the other two men. </p>
<p>Electronic swipe cards are needed to enter all Harvard residence halls, Leone said, and students at the university allowed Cosby, Copney, and the other men access to the building. The district attorney, who graduated from Harvard in 1985, acknowledged that drug use and dealing is a problem in and around the Ivy League campus. </p>
<p>Cosby’s mother, Denise, did not return calls to her home on Thursday, but the family issued a statement defending the reputation of her son, a 2005 graduate of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School.</p>
<p>"He was not a ‘hoodlum’ or ‘gangster,’ " the family said. “Justin was a fashion trendsetter, basketball player, student, and self-admitted ‘mama’s boy.’ He was looking forward to picking up new studies … and marrying his longtime girlfriend.”</p>
<p>According to court records, Cosby had at least one minor brush with law enforcement when he was arrested by Cambridge police in 2007 and charged with possession of marijuana after a small plastic bag and two marijuana cigarettes were found in his car. The drug possession charge was continued without a finding and then dismissed in June 2008 because Cosby had no new arrests during that time, records show.</p>
<p>A private wake and funeral service will be held for Cosby on Saturday. Nearly a dozen Harvard students interviewed on Thursday said they do not believe drugs are a pervasive problem on campus, just an element of undergraduate life and something nonusers could easily ignore, until this week.</p>
<p>“People make personal choices, and as long as they don’t harm other people, they can do whatever they want,” said Alan Ibrahim, a sophomore and a resident of Kirkland House who attended high school with Cosby but did not know him. “But to actually see something go bad, it’s really frightening.”</p>