A former Walmart employee will spend the rest of his life in prison for fatally shooting a teenager and injuring a 9-year-old girl inside a Fayetteville store, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Adrian Jelks, who was 19 at the time of the March shooting, was found guilty of murder after he targeted 19-year-old Antavius Holton inside the entryway of the Walmart on Pavilion Parkway where Jelks worked, Griffin Judicial Circuit District Attorney Marie G. Broder said in a statement.
After returning from a break, Jelks fired a burst of 19 rounds through the front doors into the popular grocery store, striking Holton in the back and a child who was looking at merchandise nearby with her family, according to the DA’s office. Jelks was on the run for five days before his arrest, police said.
Judge W. Fletcher Sams sentenced Jelks to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 25 years.
Credit: Fayetteville police
Credit: Fayetteville police
Video footage showed Jelks as he returned from a short break March 29. He walked through the grocery store entrance, where he remained in the vestibule between the automatic doors, according to the DA’s office.
Soon after, he went outside and appeared to watch Holton as the victim made his way into the store. Jelks then pulled out a fully automatic 9 mm pistol and pointed it at Holton, who ran inside, prosecutors said. Two of the shots hit Holton in the back, while a third struck the child, who was rushed to the hospital and survived, according to the DA’s office.
Officers responded but determined Jelks had fled the scene. Police said his abandoned vehicle was located nearby.
During the manhunt, authorities released a surveillance photo of Jelks wearing a Walmart vest. Five days later, on April 3, he was arrested by Fayetteville police after he turned himself in to the College Park Police Department, officials said.
Another suspect, Sandra Romero-Nunez, was also arrested in connection with the killing. She had faced charges that included malice murder, felony murder and aggravated assault, according to online court records. She later pleaded guilty to two counts of obstruction of a law enforcement officer, Administrative Chief ADA Kate Lenhard told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The public defender office, which is representing her, declined to comment.
Jelks was convicted of murder, aggravated assault and gun possession by a jury Oct. 23. During the trial, he testified that he knew the victim and that Holton had threatened him months earlier, Lenhard said. But no such threat was reported to law enforcement before or after the killing, prosecutors noted. Jelks was sentenced immediately after pleading guilty.
The DA’s office did not specify why it announced the sentencing in December.
“Any one of us could have been in the line of the defendant’s fire,” Broder said. “While he was clearly targeting Mr. Holton, the defendant showed absolutely no mercy to anyone in the store that night. He didn’t care who he killed, and I am grateful to the jury for holding him accountable.”
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