MACON — A 28-year-old Bibb County man was convicted of murder Thursday in the random killings of two men a week apart in 2022. One of the victims, prosecutors argued, was shot for merely catching his killer’s gaze in the parking lot of a neighborhood store.
The slayings made news in Middle Georgia two years ago, but troubling details of the cases were not divulged until accused killer Brian Marquel Greene went on trial this week.
Greene was arrested in early April 2022, days after the March 31 shooting death of Elijah Rasheed.
Rasheed was mortally wounded while sitting in a car outside a Family Dollar in west Macon. Rasheed, 28, and a couple of friends had stopped to buy a bag of ice for a party and were about to ride away.
Greene had just walked out of the store and was about to sit down in the rear passenger seat of a car parked in a space near Rasheed.
Grainy security-camera footage was played repeatedly for the jury. The video shows Greene raise his arm and, prosecutors argued, fire a shot into the car, striking Rasheed.
Prosecutors contended — and security-camera footage seemed to show — that Greene fired for no apparent reason.
Prosecutors said Rasheed and two men in his car had looked at Greene as he stepped into a car parked beside theirs. Greene, in a flash, pulled a 9 mm pistol from his pocket, prosecutors said, and squeezed the trigger. The chance encounter lasted all of maybe 10 seconds. No words were exchanged.
The driver of the car that Greene was in testified that he told her moments later that a guy in the car beside them had stared at him, prosecutor Michael Parrish said in his closing argument Thursday.
In a matter of days, Bibb sheriff’s investigators identified Greene as a suspect
They searched his apartment and found a pistol in a safe. It was linked to Rasheed’s killing.
The investigators also learned that the same 9 mm handgun had been used earlier in the shooting death of another man about 5 miles away at an apartment complex on Macon’s north side.
That victim, Glenn Eugene Stevens, 34, had been killed as he was returning home from a date the night of March 23, 2022.
Two men had tapped on a window of the car he was in. The woman Stevens was with that night testified that the two men then opened fire on Stevens when he stepped out of her car.
At the time, investigators had no suspects.
But 9 mm shell casings from the shooting scene were determined to have been fired by the same gun used in the Family Dollar slaying. A second gunman fired shots from a .45-caliber pistol, but he has never been identified.
Cellphone data placed Greene in the vicinity of both shooting scenes.
Stevens’ date could not positively identify Greene as one of the shooters.
Investigators now believe it was a possible holdup try.
“Why are we here?” Parrish asked the jury in his closing argument. “We are here to convict a spree killer. That’s what he did. He went on a run. He had a week. He went to commit an armed robbery, possibly a carjacking, and killed someone. A week later, he sees someone, makes eye contact with them, and kills them too.”
Parrish went on to describe Greene’s actions as “heartless.”
Greene did not take the stand.
Jurors deliberated for more than three hours before turning guilty verdicts.
Greene, who faces life or life without parole in prison, will be sentenced later.
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