From gruesome killings to surprising court verdicts, crime news shocked Columbus in 2019
Columbus’ year in the realm of crime and courts was marked by shocking violence and acquittals that freed suspects long held in jail in homicide cases from years past.
Here’s a rundown:
Father allegedly stabs three children, mother
No one could imagine a father fatally stabbing his three small children and their mother.
But police say Travane Jackson, known by his middle name Brandon, did just that, and admitted it in letters to the victims’ family: He stabbed to death longtime girlfriend Jerrica Spellman, 27, and their children, 2-year-old King Jackson, 1-year-old Kensley Jackson and 1-month-old Kristen Jackson.
That was on July 17, at their apartment at Elizabeth Canty Homes, off Cusseta Road near 20th Avenue.
Though police and Spellman’s family say Jackson has admitted the killings, he still faces murder charges in Muscogee Superior Court.
Today he is in prison, while awaiting trial, because his probation was revoked based on an earlier drug offense and his violating probation by assaulting Spellman in 2018.
Columbus police sergeant accused of killing paramedic
Local residents were shocked in May when a police officer and former Army Ranger was charged with shooting a Columbus paramedic during an apparent domestic dispute.
Investigators said then-Sgt. William Talley was having an extramarital affair with medic Kelly Levinsohn when he shot her in the head March 11 at her Pratt Avenue home.
Talley, who reportedly was depressed, suicidal and alcoholic, then drove Levinsohn’s truck to Harris County, where he wrecked it off I-185 and was captured after an hours-long standoff with police and sheriff’s deputies.
Despite his attorney’s efforts to get him released on bond, Talley remains isolated on suicide watch in the Muscogee County Jail.
One convicted, others plead in autistic man’s homicide
Deonn Rashaad Carter was popular with the police and firefighters he got to know through his job at a local grocery store. He could memorize their names, assignments and unit numbers.
So it was particularly distressing to them when Carter died after being shot in a 2016 robbery, and the case attracted significant attention when it went to trial in July, leading to Tyquez Davis’ being sentenced to life without parole for murder.
Four other defendants pleaded to other charges, and two testified against Davis. The others are to be sentenced Jan. 14.
Man convicted of murder freed after 12 years in prison
Derrick Cartwright’s friends and family burst into applause in Superior Court on Sept. 27 as Cartwright took a plea deal that freed him from prison after 13 years.
Cartwright, 31, was only 18 when he was jailed in the 2006 fatal shooting of Kevin Stafford. He was convicted of murder in May 2007 and sentenced to life in prison, but the Georgia Supreme Court overturned that conviction March 4, finding Cartwright had an alibi his defense attorneys failed to substantiate during his trial and on appeal.
Rather than have a new trial, he pleaded to voluntary manslaughter, and was released with credit for the time he already had served.
Man found not guilty under ‘stand your ground’ law after 15 months in jail
A carton of cigarettes led to a fight that left one man dead and another found not guilty of murder and other charges in April.
A jury April 24 found Eddie Clayton not guilty in the 2017 fatal shooting of Robert Lockhart, after Clayton claimed self-defense in a fight July 22 at a party in Clayton’s home on Grant Road in Columbus.
Clayton shot Lockhart four times after Lockhart attacked Clayton over a dispute about cigarettes. Lockhart and Clayton chipped in together on a pack of cigarettes, and Clayton chided Lockhart for giving some cigarettes to a woman he saw at the store.
Infuriated, Lockhart assaulted Clayton, leading to the fatal shooting.
Bouncer cleared in parking lot brawl that turned deadly outside Columbus bar
A Columbus jury found a former Outlaws Saloon bouncer not guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the January 2016 death of Marquis Brown, 23, who was fatally injured during a brawl in the parking lot of the 6499 Veterans Parkway bar.
James Perkins was 48 when he worked as a bouncer the night of Jan. 31, 2016, when two women in the bar got into a fight that spilled into the parking lot when everyone involved was asked to leave.
After a man punched a woman who spit in his face, the fighting escalated. According to reports, Perkins was trying to break it up when he swung an arm back and backhanded Brown, who fell and hit his head on the pavement, causing fatal bleeding in his brain.
Ex-Columbus football star pleads to child molestation involving 12-year-old girl
Justin Kenyuno Crawford once appeared headed to a career in professional football, after the star running back from Columbus’ Hardaway High School played for West Virginia University and later signed with the Atlanta Falcons.
Instead he was headed to prison, at age 23, after pleading guilty in September to child molestation and sodomy.
Crawford was cut from the Falcons’ roster on Sept. 1, 2018. On Oct. 13, he was arrested for having sex with a 12-year-old girl.
On Sept. 17, the father of three agreed to a plea deal in which prosecutors dropped three felony charges that included aggravated child molestation, for which the penalty was 25 years to life.
Instead Judge Gil McBride sentenced Crawford to 20 years in prison with 12 to serve, and the rest on probation. The judge ordered Crawford also to register as a sex offender, to have no contact with the victim or her family, and to stay away from anyone younger than 18, including his own children.
Four in Columbus plead to filing more than 300 fraudulent tax returns
Four Columbus residents pleaded guilty in January to using stolen identities to file more than 300 fraudulent tax returns under the business named “Wise Tax,” according to prosecutors.
Authorities identified the defendants as Erica D. Wise, 33; Ciourziae Weaver, 27; Linda Weaver, 52; and April Byrd, 40. They pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the U.S. government, which carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, followed by three years of supervised release.
The defendants in their plea agreements admitted conspiring together to file multiple fraudulent tax returns between March 2012 and September 2013, using personal information from taxpayers they didn’t know, authorities said.
They used four Columbus addresses for the 316 returns to be mailed to. They used stolen identities also as the names of those who prepared the returns, and none of those named knew about the scheme, prosecutors said.
Boyfriend convicted in assault on missing Columbus mother
What happened to missing Columbus mother of three Ebony Giddens remains a mystery: She disappeared from her Columbus home March 12, 2018, and no one has seen or heard from her since.
The primary suspect in her case went to trial this past October, when boyfriend Malcolm Jamaine Jackson was found guilty of charges stemming from a domestic dispute with Giddens three days before she disappeared. Judge Arthur Smith III sentenced Jackson, 30, to 35 years in prison.
Jackson represented himself as he was tried on charges of aggravated assault, aggravated stalking and using a gun to commit a crime. He was accused of putting a pistol to Giddens’ head on March 9, 2018, and of violating court orders by repeatedly contacting her when he got out of jail the next day.
“For the past 19 months, this family has been worrying and wondering about Ebony,” prosecutor Wesley Lambertus said after the verdict. “The least that we could do was go forward with the charges that he’s currently facing. The evidence was pretty clear.”
Columbus police still ask that anyone with information on Giddens call them at 706-653-3400.
Columbus had more homicides in 2019
Columbus had 34 homicides in 2018, nearly 10 fewer than the 43 reported in 2017, and local authorities had hoped for another decrease this year.
It didn’t happen. The 2019 count tied with last year’s on Thanksgiving, when a 54-year-old man was shot dead in his Cusseta Road driveway just before midnight, and then more followed in rapid succession: a 28-year-old on Dec. 1; a 27-year-old on Dec. 8; a 24-year-old on Dec. 9; a 41-year-old hit in a drive-by shooting on Dec. 15; two died from gunshot wounds on Dec. 23; and then a 20-year-old man was gunned down on Dec. 25, leaving the tally at 41 with still more days to go before 2020.
As for the past five years, beyond 2018 and 2017, Columbus had 28 homicides in 2016, 22 in 2015, and 23 in 2014, according to the Muscogee County Coroner.
This story was originally published December 27, 2019 at 5:00 AM.