More than six years after killing a DeKalb County high school football standout who had graduated just days earlier, a McDonough man has been sentenced to life in prison, officials said.
Lavaniel Davis, 23, was handed a life sentence plus 20 years at a hearing Tuesday, DeKalb District Attorney Sherry Boston announced. In late August, Davis was found guilty of three counts of felony murder, among other charges, Boston said.
Davis fatally shot 18-year-old Trevon Richardson on Memorial Day 2018 in a drug deal that turned into an armed robbery, according to the DA’s office. Richardson had graduated from Cedar Grove High School less than a week earlier, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported. He planned to continue his football career at Valdosta State University.
The night Richardson was killed, officers were called to The Life at Peppertree Circle apartment complex after getting reports of a body lying in the road, Boston said. Richardson was found dead from a gunshot wound to the chest, but he was not carrying identification and officers could not immediately determine who he was.
His body was identified after his family filed a missing person report, Boston said.
Once investigators connected with Richardson’s family, they learned the teenager was last seen alive at a different apartment complex not far from where his body was found, the DA’s office said. Officers interviewed a friend of Richardson’s who had helped him set up a deal to sell marijuana to two other men. The friend last saw Richardson get into the back seat of a Dodge Dart with the two men, later identified as Davis and his co-defendant, Detavion McDay.
According to the DA’s office, police linked the Dart to McDay and took him into custody. They searched his car, which appeared to have been cleaned, and found a bullet hole in the back seat. Investigators also searched McDay’s home and found a .40-caliber shell casing in the washing machine.
When McDay was interviewed, though he only identified Davis by an alias, he explained that it was Davis who arranged to buy marijuana from Richardson, Boston said. McDay said Davis had planned to rob Richardson all along and indicated that Davis was the shooter.
In March 2020, McDay entered a negotiated guilty plea on charges of involuntary manslaughter, criminal attempt to commit a felony and a gun count, Boston said. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison followed by 15 on probation.
Nearly a year and a half later, Davis was indicted after investigators linked him to the alias McDay used during his interviews, court records show. Davis was initially arrested on Dec. 17, 2021, according to Boston. He made his first court appearance in February 2022 and was booked into the DeKalb jail the same day, where he has remained without bond, online records show.
Richardson’s father, Freddie Richardson, told the AJC shortly after his son’s death that he’d planned to spend the summer of 2018 preparing the teen for college.
“My son, he was a good kid,” Freddie Richardson said. “It’s just unbelievable.”
At a vigil held in Richardson’s honor, Cedar Grove football coach Jimmy Smith told Channel 2 Action News that he thought of Trevon as a son.
“He played football, basketball, ran track (on the) state championship team,” Smith said. “A great kid all around.”
“The love that everybody showed us, his friends and the vigil, that was pretty much a two-day, ongoing event,” Freddie Richardson said. “I really know how much my son was loved as well as how much I loved him.”
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