It’s been almost eight years since a man shot and killed a corporate attorney in Midtown in a seemingly random attack, but it took just a few minutes for a Fulton County jury to convict him of her murder.
Raylon Lee Browning, 47, was sentenced to life without parole plus 25 years in the death of 40-year-old Trinh Huynh, who was shot and killed as she walked on Peachtree Place at the intersection with Peachtree Street in Midtown on the morning of April 3, 2017. A Fulton County jury deliberated for about 11 minutes before rendering a guilty verdict on Thursday, according to Channel 2 Action News.
Hyunh, who was born in Vietnam and came to the United States as a toddler, lived about a block from the scene of the shooting and died from her injuries after being taken to Grady Memorial Hospital.
She grew up in Gainesville and graduated from Princeton University before completing law school at Emory University. She was an attorney with UPS at the time of her death and served as a mock trial coach at Grady High School. She had previously worked at Coca-Cola and was a former board member for the Georgia Asian Pacific American Bar Association.
Hyunh was remembered as a smart woman, willing to help others. She was also described as an avid and adventurous traveler who loved her family.
“Trinh Huynh was the best of us,” sister Chi Kindland told Channel 2. “The great state of Georgia who welcomed her and our family so many years ago, has lost a brilliant adopted daughter who worked tirelessly for everyone she encountered.”
Browning was arrested the later in the day of the shooting after he ran a red light in Cobb County. Police discovered he was already wanted in Atlanta on aggravated assault charges from when he stabbed two people the night before the fatal shooting. The stabbing victims, who knew Browning, identified him to police.
Browning was a contractor working in the area, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
After being booked at the jail, he attacked another inmate and was found biting his own arm and spitting blood by deputies who used a Taser to stun Browning. He was also convicted for the two stabbings and the assault on the inmate on Thursday.
Since his arrest, Browning filed multiple motions on his own, including some wanting to represent himself, but Fulton County Superior Court Judge Shukura Ingram denied all of them. A number of mental health evaluations were ordered on Browning to determine if he was competent enough to stand trial or not.
From May 2019 through June 2024, a total of eight evaluations or attempts to evaluate Browning’s competency were made by five different doctors, according to court records.
Eventually, after a series of conflicting competency findings, Ingram held a bench trial to determine his competency. In March, Judge Ingram ruled that he had failed to prove “by a preponderance of the evidence” that he was incompetent and found that Browning was ready to stand trial.
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