‘Why did Daddy leave us?’ Family grieves man killed in Columbus ‘trap house’ at sentencing
One will spend the rest of his life in prison, and the other will spend at least 30 years there.
That’s how a Columbus judge decided the fate of two men convicted in the “trap house” murder of Stanford Jones, whose family testified Tuesday that he was more than just a neighborhood drug dealer.
Jones was shot dead in 2018 as two robbers took money and drugs from a Mellon Street duplex apartment he used for selling drugs.
At a sentencing hearing for Curtis “Baby C” Williams III and Jeffery “Red” Flakes Jr., Jones’ family said he was a father to nine children, six of them his own, including an autistic son a sister said he had a unique way of calming.
He has a young daughter who does not understand why he is gone, his widow Tekeymon Jones said: “Why did Daddy leave us?” the girl asks. “Did he not love us?”
Jones’ wife said the autistic son now repeats, “My Daddy’s dead. My Daddy’s dead.”
“I’m all that my children have left,” the wife told Superior Court Judge Gil McBride.
A jury Oct. 28 found Williams and Flakes guilty of murder, armed robbery and other felonies in Jones’ shooting on Aug. 10, 2018, when his apartment was ransacked for cash and drugs.
The victim’s family focused much of their anger on Flakes, whom Jones had befriended and mentored, giving him a place to live for months. “How did you hurt someone who wanted to help you?” one asked.
She asked about the moment they pulled the trigger. The evidence showed both men shot Jones, as surveillance video recorded both with guns, and the bullets recovered were of two different calibers.
“Did you think at all beyond that moment?” she asked. “We will forever feel this pain because of that one moment in time.”
Said a daughter: “He was a part of us that we can never get back.” Jones’ killers robbed her siblings of their childhoods, she said.
Though Jones was running what police called a “trap house,” an apartment rented for the sole purpose of selling drugs, he was trying to change his life, witnesses said. They said he looked out for others in the Mellon Street neighborhood, where he was popular.
One of the witnesses in the murder trial was a woman who ran an unlicensed store out of her apartment next door. She testified that Jones helped care for her when she had cancer.
McBride said the family’s grief showed “a terrible wound has been inflicted on the community,” but he rejected prosecutor Robin Anthony’s motion to sentence Flakes to life without parole, despite prior offenses.
Removing all hope of parole “creates a very dangerous situation” for prison inmates, and would hinder any potential rehabilitation, the judge said. He sentenced Flakes to life with parole, which typically means an inmate serves 30 years before he’s eligible for release. Flakes is 33.
Anthony argued that Williams, 37, had to be sentenced to life without parole, under Georgia law, because of his prior felony convictions: He had two for aggravated assault, in 2002 and 2016, and one for being a convicted felon with a firearm in 2014.
Williams still is charged in the Nov. 16, 2017 slaying of Steve “Stevie” Phillips, 30, found shot through the back of the head on a cut-through trail between Winston Road and Benning Drive. Anthony told McBride that evidence will be presented to a grand jury next week.
Phillips was the key witness in a murder case against Kevin Babe “Cali” Henderson, a gangster convicted in the Nov. 12, 2014, execution-style killing of Chad Herring.
