‘This was not self defense. This was cold-blooded murder,’ prosecutor says of convenience store shooting

A man charged with murder in what authorities have described as the execution-style shooting death of a man at a Macon convenience store this spring contends he acted in self defense, his lawyer argued during a Thursday bond hearing in Bibb County Superior Court.

Calvin Stapleton, 40, is charged with murder in the April 3 death of Andre Jamar Taylor, 39, outside the M&M Grocery on Montpelier Avenue. Taylor was the father of former Stratford Academy star football player Quintez Cephus, who now plays for the University of Wisconsin Badgers.

Stapleton’s lawyer, Lori Dodson, said the store is one of the closest to the Bailey Avenue home where Stapleton lived with his mother.

On probation in a drug case, Stapleton walked nearly everywhere he went, including to a motel where he had a cleaning job.

Although Stapleton made “unfortunate choices in obtaining tattoos” and was associated with the Folk gang in his young, he’s now a middle-aged man, Dodson said.

“As he’s aged, he’s left that all behind,” she said.

A convicted felon barred from having a gun, Stapleton had one because he lived in an “extremely dangerous neighborhood” and said he need it for protection, Dodson said.

On the day of the shooting, Stapleton had gone to the store to make some purchases when he encountered Taylor, a man “very high up if not the leader of the Crips” gang in Macon, Dodson said.

Taylor was at the store, deep in Crips territory, with two of his “drug lieutenants,” she said.

Stapleton’s “mere presence there was apparently enraging,” Dodson argued.

Dodson said her client was threatened with a gun for “daring to come to the store.”

There was an argument in the parking lot and Stapleton fired his gun in self defense, she said.

Prosecutor John Regan said Stapleton turned himself in to police hours after the shooting.

Though he admitted being at the store when Taylor was shot, he denied being the shooter, Regan said.

Stapleton said he and Taylor had fought a couple weeks earlier at a bootleg house, the prosecutor said.

Surveillance video shows Stapleton and Taylor walking and talking.

“There’s no threats, there’s no violence … except at the end where Mr. Taylor is talking to somebody in a car and the defendant comes up behind him, puts a gun to the back of his head and shoots him,” Regan said.

When he arrived at the detective bureau, Stapleton was wearing the same clothes as the shooter shown in the videos, the prosecutor said.

“This was not self defense. This was cold-blooded murder,” Regan said, arguing against a bond being set.

Dodson said Stapleton’s elderly mother has received death threats since the killing.

“He is certainly not going to abandon her with all of this going on,” she said in her argument for a bond.

The judge denied bond, citing concerns that Stapleton could be a risk to commit a new crime if he’s released.

Information from Telegraph archives was used in this report.

This story was originally published August 24, 2017 at 2:24 PM with the headline "‘This was not self defense. This was cold-blooded murder,’ prosecutor says of convenience store shooting."