Macon teen convicted in 2018 killing of 1 store clerk, acquitted in slaying of second
A Bibb County Superior Court jury of seven women and five men on Thursday convicted a Macon teenager of murder in the death of one of the two convenience store clerks he had been accused of robbing and killing three summers ago.
But he was acquitted of all murder and armed robbery charges in the shooting and robbery of the second clerk, who was slain a week later.
Arie Jimmelle Calloway was 16 when he was arrested and charged in the holdups and killings of the clerks, who were slain a week apart in August 2018. He is now 19.
After about four hours of deliberation, jurors found Calloway guilty of malice murder, felony murder, armed robbery, aggravated assault and kidnapping with bodily injury in the death of the first clerk, Alpeshkumar Prajapati.
Calloway, who faces at least 30 years in prison and a maximum of life without parole, will be sentenced later.
The killings of Prajapati, who was attacked as he opened for the day, and Waqar Ali, who was killed at closing time, were particularly troubling violent episodes in the summer of 2018. The victims, targeted at random, were gunned down while on the job, allegedly by a pair of teens still in high school.
Calloway had attended Westside High, while his co-defendant and cousin, Jeremy Jerome Kendrick Jr., went to Central High. Kendrick is set to go on trial at a later date.
Calloway, in videotaped interrogations with investigators, implicated himself and Kendrick, telling Bibb sheriff’s deputies that during holdups at the stores, he shot Prajapati and that Kendrick, a week later, shot Ali.
Prajapati was killed the morning of Aug. 14, 2018, inside the Gulf Food Mart at the corner of Napier Avenue and Bartlett Street. Ali was killed the night of Aug. 21, outside Market Place #5 at the intersection of Vineville and Holt avenues.
Jurors consider charges
Jurors on Thursday spent much of the afternoon considering the charges, at one point asking to again view surveillance footage of the first robbery as well as video recordings of Calloway’s interrogations. Jurors later asked Judge Howard Z. Simms for clarification on the definition of felony murder — a death that happens during the commission of a felony.
Calloway’s statements during the interrogations proved pivotal to the state’s case. Without his confession and the information he provided, there may not have been enough evidence to get a conviction. There was no physical evidence linking him to the crimes, and the surveillance footage from inside the store at the first shooting wasn’t clear enough to identify him.
In one of the interrogations, Calloway admitted shooting Prajapati at the Gulf Mart on Napier Avenue but said he only watched as Kendrick robbed and shot Ali at the Market Place along Vineville a week later.
Calloway’s admissions and other conflicting testimony — one eyewitness reported seeing a single assailant in the holdup of Ali — to his role in the second alleged robbery may have presented too much doubt for some jurors.