‘Trey shot my mommy.’ Child identified mom’s ex in Columbus double homicide, cops say
Kiera Williams’ 6-year-old daughter named the ex-boyfriend who gunned down her mother and a friend March 1 at a Columbus Family Dollar Store before homicide detectives could identify a suspect, an investigator testified Tuesday.
But other police officers already were familiar with Quartez Tremon “Trey” Thomas. He had been harassing Williams with repeated phone calls and intimidating text messages before he followed his ex-girlfriend and her friend Jasmine Trice to the the 2112 Floyd Road store, authorities said.
That’s where he shot both right outside the store entrance, with the little girl watching from the back seat of the 2008 Nissan Altima that Trice was driving, as a store security camera recorded the incident, Detective Sherman Hayes testified during Thomas’ preliminary hearing in Columbus Recorder’s Court.
Trice, 30, was found dead by the driver’s side door. Williams, 28, was mortally wounded in the front passenger’s seat. The daughter, uninjured, got out of the car on her own, after Thomas fled, and bystanders took her into the store, Hayes said.
“Trey shot my Mommy,” the girl volunteered to patrol officers called to the shooting, Hayes said.
Police were not immediately sure who “Trey” was, but they quickly tracked cell phone records, roadside cameras and other evidence to build a case against Thomas, 25, who’s charged with two counts of murder in the women’s deaths.
Hayes detailed that evidence in a hour-long hearing in Columbus Recorder’s Court, where Thomas was represented by an attorney from the Georgia Office of the Capital Defender. District Attorney Mark Jones has vowed to seek the death penalty in the case.
The evidence
Hayes and police Cpl. Christy Truitt outlined a sequence of events related to Thomas’ allegedly stalking Williams after she broke up with him about two weeks earlier.
“This has been an ongoing, violent domestic relationship from the days leading up to this incident,” Hayes told the court. “There are several instances where Ms. Williams called police officers or spoke to Detective Truitt, which would involve harassing text messages, threatening text messages.”
Truitt said Williams’ family reported that Thomas repeatedly came by a Buxton Drive home where Williams lived with her parents, demanding to speak with her.
Williams reported the harassment to police, and Truitt had discussed it with her. Truitt said she spoke with Williams by phone just 30 minutes before Williams was shot.
Around 9 p.m. Feb. 28, Williams’ father was watching TV in the Buxton Drive home when he heard gunfire, and bullets began hitting the house, Truitt said. He grabbed his granddaughter and pulled her to the floor, and Williams and her mother lay on the floor in other rooms. When the shooting stopped, the father saw tail lights from a car speeding away.
The family suspected Thomas was the gunman. He had come by the house several times that day, trying to talk to Williams, they said.
Tracking Thomas’ cell phone, police saw that he was in the Buxton Drive area the night the house was shot. The phone records also showed that the next day, he was back on Buxton Drive at 3:36 p.m., and he stopped near Trice’s home on Doyle Avenue at 3:48 p.m., Hayes said, explaining that Thomas apparently was following Williams.
Shortly before 4 p.m., Thomas began to move again, from Doyle Avenue to Buena Vista Road to Floyd Road, trailing Trice’s car to the Family Dollar, where a 911 call reporting the shooting came in at 4:04 p.m., Hayes said.
Store video showed a dark-colored sport-utility vehicle pull up behind Trice’s Nissan before a man hiding his face by pulling his jacket up over his head got out and shot into the passenger’s side window, the officer said.
How police tracked suspect
Thomas, who has family in Phenix City, immediately fled back across the Chattahoochee River into Alabama, the investigator said. Cell phone records and a remote camera on the Oglethorpe Bridge, a “tag reader” device Phenix City police put there to track stolen vehicles, showed him crossing the bridge about 4:15 p.m., Hayes said.
Williams’ family told police that before news of the shooting broke, Thomas began calling them, asking whether Williams was OK, and whether they needed him to look after the 6-year-old, Hayes said.
Later a tipster called 911 to report that the man who shot two women at the Family Dollar was staying in Room 141 at the Colonial Inn, on the 280 Bypass in Phenix City. Police with warrants for Thomas’ arrest captured him there sometime after midnight, the detective said.
He said Thomas, who earlier in the day had a full beard and thick hair, had shaved his face and head.
Investigators discovered Thomas was driving a 2012 Kia Sorento that had been carjacked at 8:42 p.m. Feb. 28 from outside a Phenix City Pizza Hut on the 280 Bypass, where the victim said she and a friend were leaving when a man pointed a gun and ordered them out of the car, Hayes said. Viewing a six-photo lineup, the victim said she was 50 to 75% sure Thomas was the one who took her car, he said.
Charges, next steps
Besides two counts of murder, police charged Thomas with aggravated assault and third-degree cruelty to children in the Family Dollar shooting. For the shooting on Buxton Drive, the night before, he was charged with first-degree cruelty to children, first-degree criminal damage to property, using a firearm to commit a crime, and four counts of aggravated assault.
Thomas’ capital defender Jerilyn Bell argued police had scant evidence in the Buxton Drive case, as no one saw Thomas shoot the house, but Judge Julius Hunter found probable cause to send both cases to Muscogee Superior Court and ordered Thomas to have no contact with the victims’ families.
He is being held without bond in the Muscogee County Jail.
Area victims of domestic or family violence can get help by calling the Hope Harbour shelter crisis line at 800-334-2836 or 706-324-3850.
This story was originally published March 30, 2021 at 11:41 AM.