Five years after the fact, a guilty verdict has been returned for three men in the case of an Augusta teen fatally wounded in a drive-by shooting after a baby’s birthday party.
At the end of a seven-day trial in Richmond County Superior Court, a jury deliberated about two hours Tuesday, Aug. 30, before finding Devonte M. Gavin, 22, Trevon D. Crump, 24, and Keonte E. Hall, 22, each guilty of 15 counts including murder felony and malice murder.
The night of June 22, 2017, 16-year-old Nicholas Griffin had attended a birthday party at a home on Jonathan Court. The older teens and adults had gone outside to enjoy the night when they heard the revving of an engine and saw a red car coming toward the home.
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Witnesses changed their statements from the night of the murder when they testified during the trial that stretched over two weeks. They were scared; they were threatened, Assistant District Attorney William Hammond said to the jury in his closing statement.
But more than one person identified Gavin as the shooter that night. Crump and Hall were with him because, as members of the same gang, they were bound to support him.
Griffin wasn’t the target that night, but another young man at the party was. Gavin wanted revenge on that young man because he didn’t help Gavin when he was pistol whipped and robbed of a gun a few days earlier. They were supposed to be in the same gang and to have each other’s back, Hammond said to the jury in closing Tuesday.
Hall and Gavin were only a year older than the victim when they were arrested. Crump was just two years older than them.
Hammond did not seek a sentence of life without parole for the murder conviction. They are young, and there is a chance for rehabilitation, he said.
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Judge Ashley Wright said the behavior during this case was disturbing, how people were encouraged and threatened to lie and conceal.
Now one family lost their 16-year-old baby. The families of three other slightly older young men will lose them to prison for decades, she said.
“As bad as it is on the outside, there is a whole different hell on the inside,” Wright said of the prison system and how gangs are running them now.
Wright sentenced Gavin and Crump to life in prison without parole plus 35 years in prison. For Hall, she imposed a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole plus 35 years.
Sandy Hodson is a staff reporter covering courts for The Augusta Press. Reach her at sandy@theaugustapress.com.
