By NC WANTED Staff

Posted: Sep 17, 2008
Updated: Sep 17, 2008

WAKE COUNTY — WAKE COUNTY: It could have been a mother’s intuition. On January 6, 2004 Judy Creech felt something troubling her. It was an unsettling gut reaction she couldn’t shake.

“I just got this overwhelming feeling that something was going to happen to Joshua. I mean it was to the point that I started crying because it was this feeling that wouldn’t go away, it was just this deep in the pit of my stomach that something was wrong. And I can remember even saying out loud, stop it. This is just ridiculous,” Judy said.

Unfortunately, her nightmare came true.

It was 6:30 p.m. Sixteen-year-old Josh Davis and eighteen-year-old Michael Morong, had just finished dinner at Judy’s house. Though it was a bitterly cold winter night, the boys walked a couple hundred yards to Josh’s dad’s house to play basketball.

Halfway there, Michael told Josh he had forgotten a few items for Josh’s father and needed to go back to Judy’s house to get them.

“I had bought a shirt for his father from Jamaica. I forgot the shirt and… I said, I’m going to run back to the house real quick and get your dad’s shirt and the Big Pun CD which he wanted to listen to. And he said, well you going to run or you going to walk? He said, I’ll wait as long as you run,” Michael told NC WANTED.

Michael said it was no more than five minutes from the time he left Josh to the time he returned. When he got back, he found Josh face up on the side of the road.

“He was laying on his back. Had his arm out to the side, his other arm was on his chest. Just kind of laying there. I moved his head to try to get his attention, but he was bleeding real bad. From what the doctor said, it was one blow at the back of his head. They said it cracked his skull and did massive amounts of damage to his head and to his brain,” Michael said.

He ran to the neighbor’s house and told them to call 911.

“I said [Josh was] hit by a car. So they did, and I ran back to his mom’s house as fast as I could, ran in and told them, I think Josh has been hit by a car. You know, only thing I can think of when someone’s laying on the side of the road at night,” he said.

When Officer David Taylor arrived on the scene, he made some observations that led him to believe otherwise.

“Normally when you have a pedestrian struck by an automobile… sometimes their shoes will come off… When I got there I noticed his shoes were actually on. Didn’t see any tearing on his clothing because if the person was thrown across the ground, it would tear up the clothing from the automobile wreck,” Taylor explained. “I then noticed too that there were two schoolbooks… near the victim. They were in a neat order. They were stacked on top of each other and they did have blood on them. This showed me that if he had the books in his hand and was hit by a car, the books would have been scattered and the pages would have been opened. So all these clues showed me that possibly that this was not a hit and run, that it was possibly a homicide.”

Rumors about what might have happened to the teen quickly spread like wildfire around Josh’s high school.

“There were rumors that a bunch of guys had problems with Josh because of a girl that Josh had kind of been talking to. They were just friends; they knew each other from school. There were rumors that since Josh was talking to this young lady, that this girl’s ex-boyfriend, or boyfriend at the time, found out and wanted to get even, or want revenge on him,” Morong said.

While keeping the hit and run theory in the back of their minds, authorities started moving in the direction of a homicide investigation.

After conducting numerous interviews and eliminating all potential suspects, police brought in outside help. They hired a private forensics investigator to look at the case with a fresh set of eyes. Based on reconstruction of the crime scene and a closer examination of the circumstances involving Josh’s death, they came to the conclusion that Josh was most likely hit by a vehicle.

Though investigators put countless hours into the case, eventually developing a plausible scenario of what probably happened to Josh, it still hasn’t been enough to ease the uncertainty of Josh’s family.

“It doesn’t make sense, but then it does make sense. I mean, that’s how flip flop everything has been for us. I feel like they gave us a scenario. I mean, an honest one in their minds. I think that is the most believable scenario that we got. But what goes through my heart all the time is was it an accident or was it intentional?” Judy said.

Michael also has his doubts about the latest investigative findings.

“Logically it doesn’t add up that he was hit by a car. Nah, I don't believe that at all,” he said.

So what really happened to Joshua Davis? Was he struck by a passing vehicle or was he the victim of a brutal attack? Was it accidental or intentional? Your tips could help answer some of the questions that still plague family and friends. There’s a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in this case.

If you have any information about the case of Joshua Davis, call NC WANTED toll free at 1.866.43.WANTED or click on "Report a Tip" Your identity can be kept confidential.