Black Georgia man convicted of manslaughter for firing into truck of teens he claimed yelled racial slurs

A Black Georgia man who used a “Stand Your Ground” defense for the deadly 2020 shooting of a 17-year-old girl was convicted Wednesday of involuntary manslaughter.

William Marcus Wilson, 23, was acquitted on the more serious charges of murder and aggravated assault for the death of Haley Hutcheson, who died after he fired into a truck in Statesboro in June of 2020.

Wilson and his then-partner, Emma Rigdon, were driving down the parkway just before 1 a.m. when they came upon the truck, filled with teens, according to Wilson’s lawyers.

“We left the intersection and…the truck started swerving into our lane, they started, you know, going up and like coming back but stayed right there with us,” Rigdon testified, according to the Statesboro Herald. “I remember going on the rumble strips, and that’s whenever Marc shot to kind of say, ‘Hey, like leave us alone.’ We just wanted to go get food.”

Rigdon said she did not remember exactly what the teens shouted, but Wilson, who did not testify, claimed that they had yelled racial slurs.

A bullet shot by Wilson broke the truck’s back window, shattering the glass, and hit Hutcheson in the head, according to the medical examiner.

Wilson claimed self-defense under Georgia’s “Stand your Ground” law.

“If Marc Wilson was a white gentlemen that night, accosted by a truckload of angry, belligerent, possibly drunk black men, and he used a legally-possessed firearm to defend himself and his passenger, that he would have been given a medal and not given a prosecution,” former NAACP Georgia president Francys Johnson said during a press conference after his June 2020 arrest.

One of the passengers in the car, Luke Conley, has been charged with misdemeanor obstruction for allegedly providing police with conflicting information. He invoked his Fifth Amendment rights when called to testify in Wilson’s trial.

Wilson is due for sentencing on Sept. 20.