SUPERIOR COURT
The individual identified as the shooter in a 2021 incident at a Jones County High School basketball game entered a guilty plea last week and received a 20-year sentence.
Jailan Letravis Lester was in Jones County Superior Court March 2 accompanied by his attorney, Debra Gomez, and entered a guilty plea to aggravated assault. A sentencing hearing followed the plea, and at its conclusion Lester was sentenced to serve the first nine years of the sentence in confinement. The defendant is to receive credit for time served in custody from Dec. 13, 2021, and the remainder of the sentence may be served on probation.
Superior Court Judge Stephen Bradley presided over the hearing, and the case was prosecuted by District Attorney T.
Wright Barksdale III.
In an interview about the case, Barksdale said Lester agreed to enter the plea to one count of aggravated assault and argue sentencing in front of the judge as the result of plea negotiations.
The prosecutor said Gomez presented a two-hour sentencing argument that consisted of witnesses on Lester’s behalf including his pastor, family members and friends. He said the state’s witnesses included Maj. Chris Williams with the Gray Police Department, Jones County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Earl Humphries, both who worked in the investigation of the shooting, and school officials including JCHS Principal Lance Rackley.
Barksdale said no one who testified remembered there being a shooting at a Jones County school before the Dec. 11, 2021, incident, and their knowledge spanned four decades.
He said Lester was a member of the gang Gangster Disciples, and the state had a warrant for his phone.
The prosecutor said a copy of the Gangster Disciples bible was found on the phone, and he incorporated its content in his cross examinations of the defense witnesses. He said it is his belief that Lester committed the shooting to increase his status in the gang.
Barksdale said text messages on the phone showed that the fight with rival gang members from Bibb County was planned.
He said the state asked for a sentence of 20 years with 15 years to serve, and the defense asked for 20 years with time spent in the probation detention center and probation.
Bradley pronounced the sentence after listening to the witnesses and the arguments from the state and defense attorneys.
Barksdale said he feels his job is to make parents know, when they put their kids on the school bus, they are safe.
“This is not Bibb County. It was scary getting the call that there had been a shooting at the school when hundreds of people were there,” he said.
The prosecutor said Rackley testified that more than $40,000 had been spent by the school system for security efforts at games following the shooting.
“I feel like we lost a little piece of our innocence that night. Gone are the days of “Grayberry” when we could leave our cars unlocked,” he said.
Lester arrest
The defendant is now 19 but was 17 at the time of his Dec. 13, 2021, arrest. He was charged with aggravated assault, possession of a firearm by a minor, disrupting a school event, affray, disorderly conduct and possession of a firearm on school property.
He spent Christmas, New Years and his 18th birthday in the Jones County Law Enforcement Center. Lester had bond a hearing Jan. 6, 2022, and it was at that hearing the state revealed video evidence proving he was the shooter.
Assistant District Attorney Cara Fiore told the court that investigators were able to zoom in on the video and Lester could be seen with the gun and firing that gun. She went on to say there was no other shooter and no evidence that any of the others arrested in the incident had a weapon at the school.
Pictures were submitted of Lester and others throwing gang signs and pictures of the defendant with firearms that were found on his phone. Fiore said a text 30 minutes prior to the shooting revealed the defendant was going to his car to get the gun.
Dec. 11, 2021, shooting background
The JCSO and Gray Police Departments had off-duty officers working security at the Dec. 11 game when the fight that led to the gunshot broke out inside the gym.
Lester was arrested by JCSO deputies at JCHS the following Monday with assistance from the United States Marshal Service.
JCSO Investigator Barron Hall said he was working security at the Dec. 11 ballgame, and Gray Police Officer Lt. Thaxton Pennamon was working security inside the gym when the shot rang out at approximately 8 p.m.
Hall said he was alerted that the gunshot took place inside of the gym in the balcony area. A large crowd began exiting all the doors of the building after the shot was heard, but no one was injured.
One shell casing was recovered during at the scene. Hall said the projectile from the gun hit the floor and separated into two pieces. Those pieces were later removed from display cases on wall.
JCSO and GPD officers converged on the scene and all the exits of the school parking lot were covered. Deputies Jeff Sullivan and John Kile detected the odor of marijuana coming from one of the vehicles. As a result, Dewayne Russell, 17, of Milledgeville and three juveniles who were passengers in the car were arrested.
Russell and all three juveniles were charged with possession of a firearm on a school campus, possession of marijuana less than an ounce, possession of a controlled substance within a thousand feet of a school zone, possession of a firearm by a minor and party to a crime.
Shelton Metice-Davis Edwards, 18, and Jitavius Tavoucia Whipple, 18, were arrested Dec. 14, and Lester was arrested Dec. 16.
Edwards was charged with reckless conduct, carrying a weapon in a school safety zone, school function or school property as a license holder misdemeanor.
Whipple was charged with disrupting public school, disorderly conduct, affray and party to a crime, and Lester was charged with party to a crime, affray, disrupting public school and disorderly conduct.
Jones County Sheriff Office Investigator Crystal Murphy, the lead investigator in the case, said videos from the multiple surveillance cameras at the inside and outside of the high school had been very helpful.
