Jurors reach verdict in 2018 fatal shooting of Macon man at Pendleton Homes
Bibb County jurors deliberated less than an hour Thursday before acquitting a Macon man on trial for murder in a shooting death at a Fourth of July cookout at a southside housing project two years ago.
Thursday’s not-guilty verdict cleared Tyrell Javon Jackson, 27, of charges he faced in the slaying of 39-year-old Kelvin “Slink” Willis.
Prosecutors, referring to witnesses’ accounts of the killing, had said Willis was shot after a brief confrontation in which he insulted Jackson, telling Jackson to “suck my (expletive).”
But over time the witnesses’ accounts of what happened and who supposedly shot Willis were inconsistent.
The night of the killing, no one at the cookout pointed the finger at Jackson. It wasn’t until the following April that the host of the cookout, the same man who called 911 to report the shooting, named Jackson as the shooter to police.
Testimony in the trial began Tuesday. No physical evidence linked Jackson to the shooting, and Jackson’s defense attorney said Jackson wasn’t even there, that he was at home across town on Elkan Avenue when the killing happened.
Speaking of the witnesses who implicated his client, Jackson’s lawyer, Robert L. Booker, of Lawrenceville, told jurors early in the trial that on the night of the killing “not a single one of them knew who did it.”
It wasn’t until April 2018 that witnesses’ statements led to Jackson’s arrest.
Booker said there was no “evidentiary basis” linking his client to Willis’ shooting.
“It’s simply because ... those people said Tyrell Jackson was present there,” Booker said, referring to prosecution witnesses.
Jackson was acquitted of murder along with two counts of felony murder in the case — counts that prosecutors tied to aggravated assault for the act of allegedly shooting Willis and the alleged use of a firearm by a convicted felon during the commission of crime.
“We knew this would be a tough case, but we respect the jury’s verdict,” Bibb District Attorney David Cooke said in a statement. “We stand by the strength of our evidence and our efforts to seek justice for Mr. Willis’s family and the community.”
Jackson, however, did not walk out of court a free man. He was on probation at the time of his arrest for a past conviction.
According to court documents, while he has been held at the county jail awaiting trial on the murder charge, he was charged with having a contraband tattoo gun in his cell.
Because of that charge, his probation was revoked until October 2022.