CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Police continued to search into Thursday night for the person who shot a man in the head and left his body on the side of the street in Charleston's East End.

Two people walking in the 1200 block of Milton Street around 1:30 a.m. Thursday saw David Jauboi Booker, 25, of Charleston, lying on the side of the road, said Charleston Police Sgt. Bobby Eggleton.

Booker had been shot in the head, Eggleton said, and had numerous injuries to his body.

Police spent Thursday looking for a white Ford Crown Victoria with front-end damage that they said might have been involved with the slaying.

"We do have several people we're speaking to right now," Eggleton said, many of whom are "known to be in the drug trade."

Eggleton said Booker, who lived in the 1500 block of Dixie Street, has a criminal record and has been involved with drugs in the past.

"He's not a random suspect. He was well known to us," Eggleton said.

In March 2004, Booker was indicted on first-degree murder charges in the fatal shooting of Donald Williams, 37, in Charleston. Booker was 17 when he was indicted, but his case was moved to adult status.

Booker eventually pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter for shooting Williams in the hallway of a housing complex at Roseberry Circle.

The fatal shooting was the second time the men had met, Booker told Charleston police the day after the shooting. A couple of months earlier, Booker tried to rob Williams in the parking lot of the apartment complex, but Williams foiled the robbery by pulling a gun, the Gazette previously reported. 

During the second meeting, Williams approached Booker in the hallway, yelled a question and punched Booker in the eye. Booker told police he "did not want to find out if Williams was still carrying a gun," so he pulled out a gun he had bought on the street and fired two shots at Williams, according to a Gazette article from 2005.

Prosecutors in the case agreed to let Booker plead to a lesser felony after discovering he was the only eyewitness to the killing, assistant prosecutor Don Morris said at the time.

Booker initially faced up to 15 years in prison, but Eggleton said Booker only served around four years for that charge.

In September 2010, Booker was charged with involuntary manslaughter after he got in a fight with Omar Lorenzo Thompson, 27, of Beckley, at 682 South Park Road.

Thompson had gotten into a fight with a younger relative of Booker's and Booker punched Thompson once in the back of the head. Thompson fell down and hit his head on a corner of a concrete sidewalk. He was pronounced dead at CAMC General later that day, according to Gazette reports.

Booker pleaded guilty to misdemeanor involuntary manslaughter charges for the 2010 incident. He was sentenced to one year in prison, the maximum for that charge, according to records in Kanawha County Magistrate Court.

Kanawha County prosecutors had told the Gazette they don't think Booker meant the punch to be fatal.

"To be a murder, I have to prove [Booker] intended to kill him with that punch," Kanawha County prosecutor Mark Plants said at the time. "There's no evidence at all that he intended to kill this person."

Booker's death is Charleston's fifth homicide so far this year. Anyone with information is asked to call the Charleston Police Department's Criminal Investigation Division at 304-348-6480.

Reach Kathryn Gregory at kathr...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5119.