NYC man is arrested in killing at Harvard

Jabrai Jordan Copney is scheduled to be arraigned in Cambridge District Court today in connection with the killing of Justin Cosby, 21, according to a statement released by Gerard T. Leone Jr., the Middlesex district attorney.

Cosby was shot inside the J entryway of Kirkland House around 5 p.m. After being shot he ran up Dunster Street to Mount Auburn Street, where he collapsed. He died Tuesday morning in Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Copney is not a Harvard student, but authorities were investigating whether Cosby was selling marijuana to Harvard students as they sought his killer.

Prosecutors said in the statement that they learned that Copney "was visiting friends at the campus."

It is alleged that the defendant, along with others, confronted Cosby in a common area inside the Kirkland House," they said. "During the course of the confrontation, multiple shots were fired. One of those shots struck Cosby, resulting in his death. It is believed that the defendant and Cosby were known to one another."

The possibility that Cosby's death might be linked to the drug trade on campus raised questions among some students about the availability of drugs at Harvard.

"Since the shooting was tied to something going on with Harvard undergraduates, it's become a Harvard problem, and the university is going to have to address it properly," said Timothy Turner, a senior. "There were students put in danger. That is something the university has to pay attention to. You don't want this to continue to expand and become a larger problem in the future."

The Harvard Crimson reported yesterday that a Harvard student, whose identity was withheld by the student newspaper, had revealed to the paper two text messages traced to a cellphone registered to a woman with the same name as Cosby's mother. The messages, sent by a man the student knew only as Justin, purportedly made explicit references to popular strains of marijuana.

University officials would not answer questions yesterday about drugs on campus and directed questions about the shooting investigation to prosecutors.

According to court records, Cosby had at least one minor brush with law enforcement when he was arrested by Cambridge police in 2007 and charged with possession of marijuana after a small plastic bag and two marijuana cigarettes were found in his car. The drug possession charge was continued without a finding and then dismissed in June 2008 because Cosby had no new arrests during that time, records show.

Cosby's mother, Denise, did not return calls to her home yesterday, but the family issued a statement defending the reputation of her son, a 2005 graduate of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School.

"He was not a 'hoodlum' or 'gangster,' " the family said. "Justin was a fashion trendsetter, basketball player, student, and self-admitted 'mama's boy.' He was looking forward to picking up new studies . . . and marrying his longtime girlfriend."

A private wake and funeral service will be held for Cosby tomorrow. Nearly a dozen Harvard students interviewed yesterday said they do not believe drugs are a pervasive problem on campus, just an element of undergraduate life and something nonusers could easily ignore, until this week.

"People make personal choices, and as long as they don't harm other people, they can do whatever they want," said Alan Ibrahim, a sophomore and a resident of Kirkland House who attended high school with Cosby but did not know him. "But to actually see something go bad, it's really frightening."

A Harvard professor and a housemaster at a different residence hall who did not want to be named because of the sensitive nature of the investigation said the university has a zero-tolerance policy toward illegal drugs. Those caught with them are usually disciplined internally, with the possibility of expulsion.

"This is of tremendous concern," the housemaster said. "Events like this underscore the issues of both physical security and the fact that drug abuse is occurring within the undergraduate population to some degree, and we have to remain vigilant about it."

Other students emphasized that the shooting shows Harvard is not an ivied sanctuary.

"We have this terrible stigma that just because we go to Harvard we must be immaculate," said sophomore Brad Paraszczak, who also lives in Kirkland. "Harvard is not in a bubble. We have problems as well, and this could have happened anywhere."

Maria Cramer of the Globe staff contributed to this report.