CLEVELAND, Ohio — U.S. Marshals arrested a man accused of setting fire to a getaway car that was registered to Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson’s grandson and used in a 2019 homicide.
Deputy marshals arrested James Greathouse, 29, late Thursday at an apartment complex in Richmond, Texas, about 28 miles southwest of Houston, according to U.S. Marshal Pete Elliott.
Greathouse is charged with arson, a fourth-degree felony. He is accused of setting fire to a car registered to Frank Q. Jackson following the Aug. 28, 2019 fatal shooting of Antonio Parra. No one, including Greathouse, has been charged in connection with Parra’s death.
Gunmen shot Parra outside a barbershop in the city’s Stockyards neighborhood, and witnesses said the shooters drove away in a car. The car traced back to the mayor’s grandson, Frank Q. Jackson, who was fatally shot last month in Cleveland’s Kinsman neighborhood.
Cleveland police officers went to the mayor’s home later that night looking to question his grandson. The next day, Frank Q. Jackson’s attorneys told investigators that he sold the car to someone else prior to the shooting. Police found the car torched behind an abandoned church days later.
The case went cold for two years, until DNA from a hat found outside the burned-out car matched with Greathouse’s, according to court records. Prosecutors filed charges against Greathouse on Sept. 16.
A gunman fatally shot Frank Q. Jackson, 24, three days later. Cleveland police officials have not released a motive for the slaying, and no arrests have been made in the case.
Surveillance video released this week from Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority cameras showed him arriving in a car, then walking up the side of a home. A gunman, who arrived prior to Frank Q. Jackson being dropped off, came from around a dark corner and fired several gunshots at him from close range, the video shows.
A woman called 911 and told a dispatcher that Frank Q. Jackson asked her to drop him off at the home so he could pick up his dirt bike. Someone shot him when he got out of the car, the woman said. The woman said she drove away when the gunfire started.
“He never should have went to come get this bike,” the woman said on the recording. She later said she kept telling him she didn’t want to drive him there, but ultimately relented.
The gunman shot Frank Q. Jackson seven times—in the head, back, right arm and his left side—and left him on his back in the side yard of a home, next to a dirt bike, according to Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner records.
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