Georgia court upholds Columbus murder conviction in 2014 fatal shooting sparked by feud
A man feuding with a Columbus family when he ambushed and gunned down a father of two on Adair Avenue in 2014 has lost his appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court.
The court has upheld the murder conviction and life sentence of Sacorey McKelvey, convicted in the April 24, 2014, shooting of Corey Owens, 29.
According to testimony in his 2017 trial, McKelvey lay in wait at the foot of a hill Owens descended as he drove away from Rivers Homes, 1050 Adair Ave., off Wynnton Road in the midtown area.
When Owens pulled up to a stop sign, McKelvey emerged from hiding and opened fire on Owens’ white Chevy Suburban, then ran to a waiting black Pontiac that sped away. Owens died the next day in the hospital, leaving behind a 2-year-old son and 11-month-old daughter. He’d been leaving to pick up his children when McKelvey shot him at about 1:50 p.m.
“Cold-blooded, premeditated murder” is how a prosecutor described the ambush, noting McKelvey had targeted Owens and his brothers because of a confrontation two days earlier.
McKelvey angrily had approached the brothers at Rivers Homes two days before the Thursday shooting, because he blamed them for a 2009 conviction on three counts of making terroristic threats, which led to his losing a job. The three victims of those threats all were associated with the Owens brothers, authorities said.
McKelvey also had another matter in mind, police said: He’d heard the brothers had been robbed of marijuana, and he hoped that they would pay him for tips on who was responsible.
Instead they told him to leave, and when he pulled a gun, they beat him up and took it away. He left saying he was going to kill them, investigators said.
Owens’ family claimed McKelvey started stalking them after that.
A jury on July 14, 2017, found McKelvey guilty after 2½ hours’ deliberation. He was convicted of murder, aggravated assault and using a gun to commit a crime.
During McKelvey’s sentencing in September 2017, Owens’ mother described the family’s fear and grief in a written statement a victims’ advocate read aloud in court.
“This tragedy was so hard to face and deal with, that the mother of his children feared for her safety and her kids and had to move away from Columbus,” it said in part. “My granddaughter was just a baby, and she does not remember her father. My grandson will never be able to celebrate his birthday, because his father died two days before his birthday.”
Born in 1991, McKelvey now is 29 years old, and is serving his life sentence at the Smith State Prison in Glennville, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.