At 4:15 a.m. on Jan. 5, a DeKalb County woman heard a gunshot in front of her home, followed by the sound of moaning in the dark. It was her stepson.
By the time police arrived, Mackel Mansfield, a 19 year old who attended Elizabeth Andrews High, was unresponsive, according to a report released Wednesday.
Snellville residents Danorrise Devon Thomas, 22, and Amy Stephens, 35, are charged with murder in the Hillandale Drive shooting. Warrants allege Thomas shot Mansfield in the chest in front of the Lithonia home, and Stephens helped by driving Thomas and hiding evidence at her house.
DeKalb police spokesman Maj. Stephen Fore said Wednesday the crime appeared to be the result of a “drug deal gone bad.”
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The police report says Mansfield’s stepmother told officers he’d left the house several times early that morning. Asked what he was doing, he said he was waiting on someone.
She heard the gunshot and looked outside but couldn’t see anything. She could only hear the victim moaning at the bottom of the steps.
Another witness reported seeing the victim walking earlier to a dark GMC Yukon. The witness went to the store and came back to find the teenager shot, the report said.
The suspects, whose relationship to one another isn’t clear, remained in jail without bond Wednesday.
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