A Clayton County man who was arrested after restaurant employees reported him to police and accused him of taking food without paying has been convicted of murder, DeKalb County officials said.
Brian Garfield Fort, 21, of Riverdale, was found guilty Thursday by a DeKalb jury, District Attorney Sherry Boston said. Fort was wanted on charges related to the murder of 20-year-old Joshua Quaintance when he allegedly picked up a food order at a Juicy Crab restaurant in Cobb County last year and left without paying.
A Juicy Crab employee snapped a photo of Fort’s license plate as he left the restaurant and shared the tag number with Cobb police when they arrived, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported. Police quickly learned that Fort was wanted in Quaintance’s killing months earlier. Using license plate readers, investigators located him in Brookhaven and took him into custody within a matter of hours.
According to Boston, Fort was celebrating his birthday on March 12, 2023, when he shot and killed Quaintance.
Investigators learned that Quaintance had accompanied his sister to Fort’s birthday party at a short-term rental property on Hillside Avenue near Decatur, Boston said. When they arrived, Fort told Quaintance’s group that the party was over and they were all going to a club. As they left the house, a woman in Fort’s party overheard Quaintance talking to someone on the phone and describing their group as “green,” meaning inexperienced or naive, Boston said.
The woman followed Quaintance outside and began hitting him, then ran back inside, Boston said. Several men, including Fort, came outside with guns and threatened Quaintance in a dispute that was captured by the rental home’s security camera. Quaintance walked away and tried to get in his car to leave, but Fort followed him. Quaintance’s sister then heard several gunshots and went toward her brother’s car, where she saw Fort standing over Quaintance’s body in the street, according to Boston.
Quaintance’s sister and their friends rushed the victim to the hospital, where he was later pronounced dead, Boston said.
Fort later said in police interviews that Quaintance had pulled a gun from his pants, leading him to open fire, Boston said. Police arrived after the shooting when both parties had left the scene, but they never found a weapon linked to Quaintance, according to the DA.
Fort was arrested in June 2023 after the suspected dine-and-dash theft. He has been held in the DeKalb jail without bond while his case was tried.
Fort was found guilty of felony murder, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. He was sentenced to life in prison plus five years without the possibility of parole.
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