Accused killer who was 16 at time of slayings now on trial in deaths of 2 Macon clerks
On Tuesday, two weeks after his murder trial was postponed because not enough prospective jurors showed up for jury selection, the case against a Macon teen accused of murdering two convenience store clerks in separate robberies three summers ago got underway in Bibb County Superior Court.
A jury of eight women and four men, some chosen because they had children of their own, began hearing testimony in the trial of Arie Jimmelle Calloway, 19, who was 16 when he was arrested in August 2018 in the days after the two clerks were killed.
The first clerk who was slain, Alpeshkumar Prajapati, died the morning of Aug. 14 inside the store at the corner of Napier Avenue and Bartlett Street.
The second victim, Waqar Ali, was gunned down a week later, the night of Aug. 21, as Ali was closing the Market Place mart at the corner of Vineville and Holt avenues.
“Two men dead — in a week,” prosecutor Greg Winters said Tuesday in his opening statement to the jury.
Winters said Calloway had later implicated himself in the crimes when he was questioned by investigators.
The case may hinge on jurors’ interpretations of Calloway’s videoed interrogation and surveillance footage from security cameras at the stores where the shootings happened.
A co-defendant of Calloway’s, Jeremy Jerome Kendrick Jr., 20, who is also charged in the killings, is in the county jail awaiting trial.
On Tuesday, Calloway’s lawyer, C. Alan Wheeler, in his opening remarks, emphasized his client’s youth, how over the course of some five hours of interrogation that Calloway merely told investigators “what they wanted to hear.”
Wheeler said there were “inaccuracies” in Calloway’s supposed confession and that police never found a murder weapon nor did they have any physical evidence linking Calloway to the crime scenes.
A 911 operator was the only witness to take the stand Tuesday as testimony began shortly before 5 p.m.
The operator spoke of taking a call from a woman who reported seeing a gunman holding up Prajapati, the Gulf clerk, about 8 a.m. the morning of the first robbery, in which Calloway is the alleged triggerman.
A recording of the call was played in court.
“He (the gunman) had the guy’s hands up in the air,” the caller can be heard saying. “He had the gun pointing at him and it looked like he might have took him in the store.”
At the end of the recording before hanging up, the caller says to herself, “Oh, my God, these folks!”
Testimony in the trial, which was expected to last a couple of more days, was set to begin Wednesday morning at 9:30.
