MACON, Ga. (AP) — A middle Georgia teenager has been convicted of the 2018 armed robbery and murder of one convenience store clerk, but acquitted in the killing of a second clerk a week later.
The Telegraph of Macon reports a Bibb County jury on Thursday convicted Arie Jimelle Holloway in the death of the first clerk, Alpeshkumar Prajapati.
Jurors found Holloway not guilty in the death of Waqar Ali, who was shot dead at a separate convenience store a week later.
Calloway, in videotaped interrogations with investigators, said he shot Prajapati and that his cousin, Jeremy Jerome Kendrick Jr., shot Ali. However, Calloway’s attorney said the defendant, then 16, told investigators “what they wanted to hear” during a five-hour interrogation, emphasizing parts of the confession didn’t line up and that police never found a murder weapon or other physical evidence linking Calloway to the deaths.
In one of the interrogations, Calloway admitted shooting Prajapati and said he watched as Kendrick robbed and shot Ali. Under Georgia law, that could have made Calloway guilty of felony murder in Ali’s death. But one eyewitness reported seeing a single gunman in the robbery of Ali.