Investigators linked Kemaree Davis to Thomas Stewart’s killing through surveillance, his police statements and messages sent after the fatal shooting.
MUSKEGON, Mich. — A message sent about an hour after a 73-year-old man was shot inside his Muskegon home became one of the most striking pieces of evidence in a murder investigation that ultimately ended with 16-year-old Kemaree Davis receiving a 20-to-60-year prison sentence. The message did not stand alone. Police assembled surveillance footage, crime-scene evidence, Davis’ own statements and witness testimony as they built the case over the months following Thomas Stewart’s Dec. 1, 2025, death.
Davis was sentenced Sept. 22 after resolving the prosecution with a no-contest plea in August. Local reports identified the resulting conviction as second-degree murder, along with felony firearm use and carrying a concealed weapon. The sentence marked the end of the trial-court phase of a case in which the investigative record had gradually become public through police briefings and court testimony. Instead of hinging on a single confession or eyewitness account, the case described in those reports developed through several pieces of evidence that prosecutors said pointed in the same direction.
The physical evidence came first. Officers responding to the 1400 block of Jiroch Street at about 9:30 a.m. found Stewart inside his home with a gunshot wound to his upper body. He died at the scene. His wallet was next to his body, police said, and his pockets appeared to have been turned out. Those details immediately gave investigators reason to consider robbery. Police would later say they believed the person responsible knew Stewart and that only Stewart and the shooter were inside the home during the fatal encounter. That assessment narrowed the question from whether a stranger had entered the house to which person in Stewart’s circle had been there that morning.
Surveillance video supplied another part of the timeline. Investigators said footage showed Davis, who knew Stewart, entering and leaving the home. Other surveillance evidence described during later court proceedings placed Davis and a 17-year-old together outside Muskegon High School on the morning of the shooting and showed them heading in the direction of Stewart’s residence. The footage did not by itself explain what took place inside, but it helped detectives establish Davis’ movements before and around the time of the killing. About a week after Stewart died, police arrested Davis and announced that prosecutors would charge him as an adult.
The next layer came from Davis himself. Investigators said that during a police interview he acknowledged going to Stewart’s home intending to rob him. According to testimony reported from the case, Davis said Stewart found him in the residence and gave him $20. Davis claimed the firearm “went off.” He then admitted taking another $20 from Stewart’s wallet after the shooting, investigators said. That account connected the suspected robbery to the condition in which police had found Stewart’s belongings while also placing Davis inside the home when the fatal gunshot was fired.
Then investigators examined communications made after the killing. About an hour after Stewart was shot, Davis sent the 17-year-old a message saying, “The old man is dead,” and describing how he had watched Stewart’s final breaths, according to a detective’s testimony at a March preliminary examination. Prosecutors treated that communication as significant evidence because of its timing and content. It provided a contemporaneous statement attributed to Davis about Stewart’s death, separate from the explanation Davis later gave police that the firearm had discharged during the robbery.
The 17-year-old recipient became part of the wider investigation as well. Authorities said the teenager was charged with a weapons offense after he and Davis were taken into custody following an attempted traffic stop. At Davis’ preliminary examination, the 17-year-old reportedly gave testimony that conflicted with investigators’ account of events, including saying he did not remember meeting Davis and denying knowledge of social media accounts police associated with his phone. He was arrested on a perjury allegation after that hearing, according to reports. Those proceedings added another evidentiary dispute around the case without changing the prosecution’s contention that Davis was the person who fired the fatal shot.
Police had publicly expressed confidence in that conclusion months earlier. Muskegon Public Safety Director Tim Kozal said in December that investigators believed Stewart and the suspect were alone inside the home and that the purpose of the visit was a robbery. He also said Stewart knew many people in the neighborhood and was friendly and helpful to them. Investigators believed Davis knew Stewart and may have been allowed into the home. The relationship mattered because it helped explain access to the residence while also underscoring the betrayal perceived by Stewart’s family and neighbors.
The case did not proceed to a jury trial. Davis entered a no-contest plea in August, eliminating the need for prosecutors to present the full evidence to jurors. Earlier reports had described the original charge as open murder; coverage of the plea and sentence identified the homicide conviction as second-degree murder. Michigan law provides that second-degree murder may be punished by life imprisonment or any term of years. Because Davis was a juvenile convicted of a qualifying serious offense, state law required that he be sentenced in the same manner as an adult. The result was a prison term that will extend far beyond his teenage years.
At sentencing, the emphasis changed from how investigators proved the case to what the killing had taken from Stewart’s family. Relatives described Stewart as “Uncle Tommy,” an older man whose home and relationships were part of the neighborhood around him. His son Terrance Stewart said his father had cancer and weighed about 100 pounds before his death. He also remembered a parent who urged his children to pursue their goals and become better people. Another son, Dalrecus Stewart, said seeing Davis’ youth in person challenged the image he had formed of the person who killed his father.
Davis apologized in court. He told Stewart’s relatives that he was sorry and described Stewart as a kind and caring man. The apology became another statement in a case notable for words attributed to Davis at very different points in time: the message sent shortly after the killing, the account he gave investigators after his arrest and the remorse he expressed at sentencing. The court did not have to decide which of those statements best reflected his state of mind. His plea had already established the basis for conviction, leaving the judge to impose punishment within Michigan’s sentencing framework.
Circuit Judge Matthew R. Kacel ordered Davis to serve 20 to 60 years on the murder conviction. Davis also received two years for felony firearm use and two to five years for carrying a concealed weapon. Reports said those weapons sentences would run concurrently. The court credited him with 288 days already served on the weapons counts but not against the murder sentence. The sentencing therefore transformed the investigative timeline — a house, surveillance footage, $40 described in Davis’ account, a gunshot and a message sent afterward — into a final judgment carrying a minimum of two decades in prison.
The evidence trail also reflected the speed with which the investigation developed. Stewart was killed Dec. 1. Police had Davis in custody about a week later and publicly announced the adult murder charge soon afterward. By March, testimony at the preliminary examination was exposing the communications and surveillance evidence gathered by detectives. Davis entered his plea in August, and the sentence followed in September. Across those stages, some legal descriptions changed, but the basic factual account remained consistent: Stewart was shot during what authorities described as a robbery, Davis knew him, and investigators used multiple forms of evidence to connect the teenager to the killing.
With Davis now sentenced, the central prosecution no longer turns on whether that evidence will persuade a jury. It has become part of the record behind his conviction and prison term. For Stewart’s family, the same record documents the final hours of a 73-year-old father who was already battling cancer. For investigators, it shows how a sequence of ordinary evidentiary sources — a scene, video, interviews and electronic communications — converged on one suspect and eventually led to a plea rather than a trial.
Author note: Last updated November 8, 2026.