Iowa state troopers responding to a routine jump-start of a stalled car were met with a gruesome surprise: a dead man who had been shot twice and concealed under a pile of clothing.
Driver Jihad Abdul Malik Gasaway, 23, was initially charged on Tuesday with abuse of a corpse and booked into Poweshiek County Jail on $50,000 bail, per an Iowa Department of Public Safety press release.
Another charge for first-degree murder was added Thursday after an autopsy ruled victim Kemp Xavier Sherrod Harriel's death a homicide. Fox News Digital could not reach the agency to determine whether this increased Gasaway's bail.
Troopers noticed a silver Chevy Malibu parked on the shoulder of Interstate 80 and its driver standing alongside it around 8:10 a.m. Tuesday, per the release. Gasaway told officers that his vehicle needed a jump-start.
"Upon further investigation… [Gasaway] stated that he was in possession of a firearm and produced it," the release read. "Troopers were able to secure the firearm and the male suspect."
The officers then spotted an unresponsive man slumped over the passenger seat and covered by a pile of miscellaneous clothing "in [Gasaway's] attempt to conceal the body," according to the release.
They quickly determined the dead man had sustained two gunshot wounds to the chest.
"[Gasaway] did not notify anyone of the male subject inside the vehicle [or]… call 911 to request medical assistance," read an arrest affidavit obtained by Fox News Digital. "[Gasaway] did not advise the Troopers on scene that there was someone in a medical emergency in the vehicle or… deceased in the vehicle."
As he sat in the trooper's cruiser and saw the officers encounter the body, determined to be 26-year-old Harriel, Gasaway could allegedly be heard on recording saying "please be OK."
The officer found a spent 9 mm shell casing on the Malibu's floorboards, police said, and two fired bullets lodged in the passenger door; both matched Gasaway's Taurus 9 mm handgun, per later crime lab testing.
Gasaway was taken to the Poweshiek County Sheriff's Office, where he told interrogating officers that he and Harriel had set out alone from Cedar Rapids for Des Moines that morning, per the affidavit.
He insisted that he "didn't know [Harriel] was gone until [he] watched the police eyes and read his lips… that's when I started crying in the car."
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Before the officers searched his vehicle, Gasaway claimed, Harriel "was alive and talking to [him]."
When asked why the body was buried under clothes, the 23-year-old told investigators he "thought [Harriel] was very cold."
"[I] kept him warm because we were both cold," Gasaway allegedly said. "I just waited for the police."
Investigators learned that someone – other officers or another interstate driver – had reported the same Chevy Malibu in a ditch about 20 miles earlier along the road around 6:01 that morning.
When asked whether Harriel was alive when they drove into the ditch, Gasaway allegedly responded "yeah"; when subsequently asked what happened to Harriel, he simply replied "we got into it."
