A man who booked a rideshare car to a Gwinnett County home where he killed three men in order to steal a bag of illegal drugs was convicted of murder and handed three consecutive life sentences Friday, officials said.
A jury found 25-year-old Justice Lusk guilty of three counts of malice murder, among other charges, in the November 2020 incident, Gwinnett District Attorney Patsy Austin-Gatson said in a statement. Lusk was immediately sentenced to three life terms in prison without the possibility of parole.
“This was an outrageous act of violence,” Austin-Gatson said Friday.
Lusk shot and killed Bob Caverly, 64, Steven Andrew Finch, 33, and Eugene McClam, 45, at a Lawrenceville home, Austin-Gatson said.
According to evidence presented at trial, Lusk booked an Uber to drop him off at Caverly’s home on the afternoon of the shooting. Gunshots rattled the Creek Water Court cul-de-sac soon after, and witnesses saw Lusk leave the home carrying a backpack and a blanket. He tried to get into the car of a Lyft driver, but the driver refused to give him a ride and he fled into the woods.
After running through a muddy, wooded area, Lusk tried to stash the backpack, blanket and guns in the crawlspace of a home on Millstream Trail, according to the DA’s office.
Credit: Gwinnett County District Attorney's Office
Credit: Gwinnett County District Attorney's Office
Gwinnett police responded to the area and found McClam suffering from multiple gunshot wounds on his neighbor’s porch. Caverly’s body was found inside the house near the front door, while Finch was found dead in the garage.
A K-9 unit found the stashed items later that day and police recovered an AK-47 rifle, a handgun, muddy clothes and shoes that had been discarded and a large amount of marijuana and methamphetamine. At that point, investigators had already identified Lusk as a suspect through his Uber records, Austin-Gatson said.
A little after midnight, just hours after the shooting, police got a 911 call about a suspicious car from a resident on Millstream Trail, the DA’s office said. Responding officers located the vehicle and found Lusk in the passenger seat, at which point he was arrested.
In later interviews, Lusk told police he shot the three men because his life was threatened, Austin-Gatson said. Lusk took the stand during his trial and attempted to claim he acted in self-defense, according to prosecutors, through the jury roundly rejected his version of events.
In addition to three counts of malice murder, Lusk was found guilty of three counts each of felony murder, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.
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