Almost two years after a college student was shot to death in the middle of a street just outside Griffin, a Spalding County jury found one of the two suspects guilty, the district attorney’s office announced Friday.
Demoni Lamar Beck, 19, was convicted of murder, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony in connection with the May 27, 2022, killing of 22-year-old Jacqueris Holland. Beck was acquitted of two gang charges, court documents show.
He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus five years.
Jadaquis De’Andre Noble, 22, was also tried, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict, the Griffin Judicial Circuit DA’s office said. He will be retried “in the near future.”
Holland, a cosmetology student at Southern Crescent Technical College, was driving on North Hill Street near its intersection with East McIntosh around 2:30 a.m. when a silver vehicle passed him and fired several shots into his car. He was struck multiple times, and the suspects sped away.
Credit: Spalding County Sheriff's Office
Credit: Spalding County Sheriff's Office
At the time, detectives said Holland stopped in the middle of the road and got out of his car, walked to the front of the vehicle and fell to the pavement, where he died. It was a gang-related killing, Spalding Sheriff Darrell Dix wrote in a lengthy and impassioned Facebook post providing an update on the case.
He stressed that Holland had “no criminal record and no gang affiliations himself” while condemning “gang members who are in reality nothing more than cowards that work by night, and terrorists living among the decent people that they prey upon.”
According to court documents, prosecutors believe the shooting was in retaliation for the conviction of Andre Noble Sr., a founder of the Rollin 20s Neighborhood Bloods Zoo Krew gang. Andre Noble is related to Jadaquis Noble, and he and Beck are members or associates of the gang, prosecutors said in a motion.
It was not clear how Holland was allegedly connected to the conviction.
At trial, prosecutors showed DNA evidence that linked Beck to a car that was used in the shooting. Additionally, license plate readers, GPS and cellphone data, as well as surveillance images, all showed how he — and allegedly Noble — “stalked the victim before killing him,” the DA’s office said.
“Gang violence has taken too many lives across the circuit,” DA Marie Broder said in a statement. “We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to work hard to eradicate gang violence from the circuit and keep the citizens of Spalding County safe.”
