Bibb County jury delivers verdict in trial of two Macon teens charged with murder
Two Macon teenagers accused of shooting a man to death in a middle-of-the-night ambush at a public housing complex were found not guilty Friday in Bibb County Superior Court.
Jurors deliberated for about an hour-and-a-half before acquitting Deshond Jah’Ryon Willis and Naylan Jon’Tez Woodford, both 18.
The teens were arrested and charged with murder and aggravated assault in the wake of the May 22, 2020, slaying of Damond “Miami” Stevens, who was 38.
Testimony in the trial began Tuesday and featured more than a dozen witnesses, including a man named Jacorey “Mookie” Holloway, 27, who was shot three times in the buttock during the shooting but survived.
Woodford and Willis did not take the witness stand.
Their attorneys argued that the two teens were not the shooters and that eyewitnesses had not identified the pair as the assailants.
The shooting, a burst of about 10 total gunshots from 9mm and .45-caliber handguns, happened at 12:30 a.m. at the edge of the housing complex at the corner of Houston and Cynthia avenues, just south of downtown where Stevens and Holloway had been hanging out.
Bibb sheriff’s investigator Tony Moss testified Thursday and explained how Woodford and Willis came to be implicated in the attack.
Moss said a 17-year-old girl, after some prodding by her mother to “get her head right,” later informed him that she had picked up Willis and Woodford from the scene in an SUV.
Moss said the girl, upon seeing an image from a security camera that recorded footage near the shooting, identified Woodford as one of the gunmen believed to be fleeing.
The investigator said Holloway, the man who was wounded and survived, later picked Willis out of a photo lineup. But prosecution arguments failed to sway the jury in a case that featured an oft-confusing swirl of events and an at-times confounding cast of characters who were not always forthcoming about the night in question.
This story was originally published October 28, 2022 at 5:19 PM.