A Macon girl shot in the neck in 2017 died 2 years later. Now a man is charged with murder
It was fall 2017 and NyKhia Sampson was 15 the day she was shot in the neck and critically wounded.
Sampson, who according to her obituary was affectionately known as “Black Beauty,” died two years and four months later at age 17.
Her death in March 2020 went largely unreported by local news outlets.
But over the past half decade, a young man allegedly linked to her killing, Kedrick Tyrese Reynolds, has remained in custody on other charges.
Reynolds, now 23, was 18 at the time of Sampson’s shooting. He was arrested then on charges of giving the police false information about what happened to her and allegations of violating his probation in a prior case.
According to investigators, Sampson and Kedrick and a 2-year-old child were in an apartment at Blossom Hill Estates, across Mercer University Drive from Macon Memorial Park cemetery, the afternoon of Nov. 21, 2017.
Officials have never divulged how Sampson and Kedrick may have known one another.
A preliminary account of the shooting from Bibb County sheriff’s deputies said Sampson was “handling a firearm that was reported to belong to Reynolds. When Reynolds took the gun from Sampson, the gun discharged, striking Sampson in the neck.”
The sheriff’s statement further noted that when asked about the episode, Reynolds told investigators some version of events that “was not found to be true.”
This week, on Tuesday, a Bibb grand jury indicted Reynolds on two felony murder charges.
The prosecutors’ formal charges allege that Sampson’s wound led to her death some 28 months later, and that Reynolds, “irrespective of malice,” was responsible.
The prosecutors based the two felony murder charges that Reynolds now faces, in part, on grounds that he was a first-offender probationer.
Reynolds was convicted of marijuana possession in Jones County six months before the shooting.
The strict conditions of his sentence said he could not have guns or be around them.
Tuesday’s indictment said that two guns — a .380-caliber pistol that shot Sampson and a 9mm Glock — were at the apartment “within arm’s reach” of Reynolds.
It was unclear why nearly five years passed before murder charges were brought. However, Sampson’s death in March 2020 coincided with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, which triggered a legal logjam.
This story was originally published August 24, 2022 at 2:38 PM.