{"id":207680,"date":"2026-03-06T18:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T18:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/207680\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T18:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T18:16:09","slug":"arrest-made-in-death-of-72-year-old-man-in-fresno-police-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/207680\/","title":{"rendered":"Arrest made in death of 72-year-old man in Fresno, police say"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao MvWXB TjIXL aGjvy ebVHC \">FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) &#8212; Fresno police say they have arrested 53-year-old Lemual Wheatley for allegedly killing 72-year-old Leon Conway in Central Fresno back on February 12.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Police were called to do a welfare check at an apartment complex near First Street and Dayton Avenue.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Neighbors had said they hadn&#8217;t seen or heard from Conway for multiple days.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Officers forced themselves into the apartment and found Conway dead inside.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Investigators discovered that Conway and Wheatley knew each other and had a fight on January 31.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The fight escalated, and that&#8217;s when Wheatley allegedly physically assaulted Conway, causing blunt force trauma to his body, killing him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">On Wednesday, Fresno Police located Wheatley near Bardall and Kaviland avenues in Southeast Fresno and arrested him for an unrelated warrant.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">On Thursday, homicide detectives then charged Wheatley with Conway&#8217;s murder.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The investigation is ongoing. Anyone with information is asked to call the Fresno Police Department.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">This is a developing story.  Stay with Action News on-air and online for the latest details.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright \u00a9 2026 KFSN-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) &#8212; Fresno police say they have arrested 53-year-old Lemual Wheatley for allegedly killing 72-year-old Leon&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[95791,95790,112,114,113,4052,294],"class_list":["post-207680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-95791","tag-arrest-made-in-death-of-72-year-old-man-in-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-police-say","tag-timely"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}