The call came in before the gunshots.

On the line with a 911 dispatcher, a young woman’s voice trembled—not with hysteria, but with a clarity sharpened by fear. She said her ex-boyfriend was calling her. She said he was threatening to shoot up her house. She said she had two children inside.

She was asking for help.

A short time later, the kitchen became a crime scene.

On April 3, 2024, officers and medics were dispatched to a home in Dayton, Ohio, after reports of a shooting. When they arrived, they found a woman on the kitchen floor, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. The room—meant for meals and conversations and the ordinary rituals of family life—was torn apart by violence. The woman was rushed to a nearby hospital. She did not survive.

Her name was Montanae Davis. She was 26 years old.

Before the sirens, before the shattered doors, before the chaos, Montanae had tried to stop what was coming. According to court records, she told dispatchers that her ex-boyfriend was threatening her life and that her children were at home. Those words now sit at the center of the case—an early warning that arrived just minutes too late.

Investigators say Jamartay Brown came to the house shortly after the call. He didn’t knock. He didn’t pause. He went to the back of the home and forced his way inside, kicking at the rear door and the garage door until one gave way.

What followed was fast and devastating.

According to the affidavit, Brown entered the home and shot Montanae Davis multiple times. The kitchen filled with noise and terror. A friend who was inside the house heard the gunshots and, in a moment of sheer survival, fired her own weapon toward Brown before fleeing. She ran from the house, away from the violence, away from a scene that would haunt her forever.

Brown fled before police arrived.

But the story did not end there.

Detectives followed the trail quickly, piecing together movements and witness accounts. The investigation led them to another home, where officers observed a man placing a firearm—wrapped in a toddler-sized T-shirt—into a nearby storm sewer. The detail would later strike many as chilling: a child’s clothing used to hide a weapon after a killing tied to a mother who had pleaded for her children’s safety.

That man, along with two others—including one who matched Brown’s description—was seen leaving the area in a truck.

At 4:10 p.m., police arrested Jamartay Brown in another part of the city. The gun had been discarded. The victim was gone. And a case that would take nearly two years to resolve moved into the slow machinery of the courts.

Brown was arraigned on April 9, 2024, in Dayton Municipal Court. The list of charges was long and severe: four counts of aggravated murder; multiple counts of murder; aggravated robbery; aggravated burglary; felonious assault; and tampering with evidence. A judge set bond at $1 million.

For Montanae’s family, none of it brought relief.

They were left with the unbearable knowledge that she had seen the danger coming. That she had asked for help. That she had named the threat. And that despite all of it, she was still killed in her own home.

In the months that followed, the case moved forward, marked by filings, hearings, and evidence that painted a grim timeline. Prosecutors outlined a story of forced entry and deliberate violence. Defense attorneys challenged the state’s claims. The courtrooms filled with legal language that struggled to contain the human cost of what had happened.

Through it all, Montanae’s name was spoken again and again—attached to charges, to exhibits, to testimony—until it risked becoming just another line in a docket. But for those who knew her, she was not a case number.

She was a mother.

She was someone who cooked in that kitchen. Someone who laughed there. Someone who had children who expected her to come back from the other room. Someone who, in her final moments, was thinking not just about herself, but about keeping her kids safe.

On January 14, 2026, nearly two years after the shooting, a jury delivered its verdict.

Jamartay Brown was found guilty of four counts of aggravated murder and two counts of felonious assault.

The courtroom absorbed the decision in silence. For the prosecution, it was accountability. For the defense, the end of a trial. For Montanae’s family, it was something far more complicated—validation mixed with grief that no verdict could resolve.

Brown is set to be sentenced at a later date.

The law will decide how many years he spends behind bars. It will determine the language of punishment. It will close the file.

But outside the courtroom, questions linger.

What does it mean when a woman calls for help and is killed anyway? What does it say about the gaps between warnings and protection, between fear voiced and fear prevented? How many other voices sound the alarm before the door is kicked in?

The details of the case are stark: a forced entry, a firearm, a kitchen turned into a killing ground. But the most haunting moment may be the one that came first—the 911 call placed before the shooting, when Montanae Davis was still alive, still trying to shield her children from what she believed was coming.

In the end, the story of Montanae Davis is not just about a verdict. It is about a promise broken—the promise that calling for help will be enough. It is about a young woman who recognized danger, named it, and paid with her life anyway.

And it is about a quiet truth that remains long after the headlines fade: justice can punish a crime, but it cannot rewind the clock to the moment when a frightened mother picked up the phone and hoped someone could get there in time.