Suspected murderer of Cape woman charged with mob action in jail fight

A Cape Girardeau murder suspect is among six prisoners charged with mob action in Jackson County, Ill.

Court records show Brandon Banks, 28, and five other men were charged Friday with mob action or force involving two or more people.

Banks is in the Jackson County Jail awaiting trial after being extradited to Illinois on a first-degree murder charge.

He is accused of killing Marsha Ann Brown, 40, of Cape Girardeau.

A motorist found Brown's body the morning of Jan. 14 in a ditch on the south side of Potters Road near U.S. 51 in rural Makanda, Ill., the Jackson County Sheriff's Department reported at the time.

Two days later, authorities arrested Banks in St. Louis.

He appeared for arraignment last week in Jackson County Circuit Court, where he pleaded not guilty. The murder case against him is set for trial July 7, with a pretrial conference scheduled for July 1.

A charging document filed Friday in the mob action case accuses Banks and his co-defendants -- all inmates at the Jackson County Jail -- of disregarding jail staff orders to go to their cells.

Some of the men instead "armed themselves with weapons and in the process inflicted violence upon another inmate," the document states.

One of Banks' co-defendants, Marquis J. Sutton, 30, of Carbondale, Ill., is accused of kicking another man in the buttocks and knocking him to the floor, where the victim struck his face, the document states.

Online court records show four other men were charged along with Banks and Sutton.

Dangelis M. Chambers, 23, of Herrin, Ill.; Kely Y.V. Arbuckle, 26, and Dontriel J. Barnes, 17, both of Murphysboro, Ill.; and Elijah J. Mosley, 20, of Carbondale, Ill.; all face a single count of mob action or force involving two or more persons, a Class 4 felony.

Class 4 felonies carry a sentence of one to three years in prison.

The mob-action case is set for a preliminary hearing May 13.

epriddy@semissourian.com

388-3642

Pertinent address:

Jackson County Jail, Murphysboro, Ill.