(Moore’s mugshot via the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office)
So this is pretty f*cked up.
If you happen to be a hardcore MMA fan with a near-perfect memory dating back roughly a dozen years, you might remember Homer “Rock” Moore from his lone appearance at UFC 34: High Voltage, which resulted in a second round loss via armbar to Evan Tanner. No? Well, perhaps you might remember Moore from his notable scraps with such UFC veterans as Chael Sonnen, Dan Severn, Jeremy Horn, and Joe Riggs among others. Ringing any bells?
If you still are coming up short in regards to Mr. Moore, fret not, for you’ll surely remember his name after you read this. Earlier today, Moore was arrested in connection with a particularly brutal murder of a 19-year-old man in Tempe, Arizona that took place back in 1999. According to AZ Central, Moore was allegedly one of several men who helped lure Karam Hussein Jabbar into a townhouse as part of a drug deal, only to suffocate Jabbar and stuff him into the trunk of a car that they then abandoned in a grocery store parking lot. Some fifteen years later, police were finally able to gather enough evidence to arrest him:
The case began in August 1999 when Jabbar, a 19-year-old retail salesman from Scottsdale, was found in the trunk of a vehicle with his hands and feet bound and a bag over his head in the parking lot of a grocery store in Mesa.
According to police, Jabbar was set up by Moore.
Moore and Jabbar met through a mutual acquaintance, and Jabbar was going to take marijuana to Moore and a group of others. But Moore and the others planned to rob Jabbar, he said. The group took Jabbar to a townhouse in Tempe, where the murder took place.
Police found the body after complaints of a smell coming from the abandoned vehicle were reported.
The Medical Examiner’s Office determined Jabbar’s cause of death was asphyxiation, police said.
Moore was said to be known for drugs throughout the club scene.
According to the article, Moore was questioned by detectives in 1999 when Jabbar’s body was originally discovered, but was later cleared when no physical evidence against him was found.
Moore last competed in March of 2013, where he scored a first round KO over Vincent Lawler at All Powers Combat 11.
There’s not much else to say, really, other than that the family of Jabbar can finally have a little closure in what remains a horrific and ongoing crime. We will have more on this story as it develops.
Update: In the uncropped version of the booking photo, you can see that Moore was wearing a UFC shirt at the time of his arrest.
