MACON — On the last evening of March 2022, Gregory Harris stopped at a Family Dollar store for a bag of ice. He planned to celebrate his promotion at work by hosting a party with two friends that night.
Harris and those friends were in his Kia. They were about to pull out of a parking space and leave the store when Harris noticed a stranger strolling toward a nearby car. The man was staring at them, Harris mentioned to his friends. They stared back.
With the Kia’s windows rolled up, and the man out of earshot, Harris joked to his friends, “Maybe he’s checking us out.” The encounter between the stranger and the three gay men lasted less than 30 seconds. Security footage shows no words were exchanged.
But, as Harris backed out of a parking space and drove maybe 10 feet away, he heard a “pow” — a single gunshot.
A bullet pierced the Kia’s trunk and struck Harris’ friend, Elijah Rasheed, in the back. Harris raced to a nearby hospital, but Rasheed, 28, did not survive.
On Thursday in Bibb County Superior Court, Brian Marquel Greene, 28, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder of Rasheed, as well as the slaying of another man eight days prior.
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
Within a week of Rasheed’s death, police using surveillance footage and eyewitness accounts tracked down Greene. In his apartment, in a safe, they found the 9 mm pistol used to shoot Rasheed, authorities said. The gun was also linked to the killing of Glenn Eugene Stevens, 34, in an apparent carjacking-robbery try about 5 miles away on March 23, 2022.
Harris said Thursday that, at the Family Dollar, he thinks Greene was trying to scare the three men because they were gay.
“If it was a straight man staring at him, I don’t think he would have pulled a gun,” Harris, 34, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution after Greene’s sentencing.
Greene was not charged with hate crimes in Rasheed’s death, but prosecutors have said sheriff’s investigators believe Rasheed and his friends were targeted because they were gay. Greene didn’t know the men. There was no argument. He just raised his pistol and fired as they rode off. Prosecutors, in their closing argument, declared Greene a “spree killer.”
Harris stood before Judge Connie L. Williford at Thursday’s hearing and in his victim impact statement spoke of his “emotional scars.” He said the unprovoked shooting was “very traumatizing” for the LGBTQ+ community. Details of Rasheed’s killing did not emerge publicly until Greene was found guilty Oct. 24.
From the bench, the judge told Harris that his actions and those of his surviving friend to save Rasheed were “very brave.”
The judge also said, as she ordered Greene to spend the rest of his life behind bars, “Ordinarily, I agonize over what to do in these sentences. But this was not one that I agonized over at all.”
Outside the courtroom, Harris, a medical assistant, said it has taken him a long time to look anyone in the eyes when he talks to them. He still can’t grasp what prompted Greene to shoot at him and his friends.
“He had no motivation,” Harris said. “What kind of guy does that? What is your thought process? And then to find out you were tied to another murder not 10 days before that. How do you live with yourself?”
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
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