Columbus man says teen who was killed in alleged gang slayings shot at him earlier

Juanyae Baldwin tried to buy a gun from Jesse Ransom two days before Ransom was gunned down with another Columbus teen in an alleged gang shooting a few blocks away.

The attempted sale nearly got him shot, he testified this week in the double-murder trial of three men accused of killing Ransom, 17, and Saiveon Pugh, 18, about 10 p.m. on June 14, 2021, at Seventh Avenue and 32nd Street.

About 1 p.m. the previous June 12, Baldwin met Ransom outside his sister’s duplex apartment in the 800 block of 30th Street, having replied to Ransom’s Facebook offer of a gun for sale.

He said Ransom showed up in a “raggedy” little car with two others, he testified. They haggled over the gun and whether Baldwin would pay cash or trade an Xbox game console, before negotiations broke down, he said.

He foresaw what was coming, and ran back into the apartment, telling the three adults and four children inside to take cover, he said.

Then bullets started coming through the walls: “They went to bustin’..... I mean, they went to shootin’,” he testified.

No one was hit in the barrage of gunfire that a police officer said left shell casings littering the road at 30th Street and Rose Avenue, most of them from 9-millimeter rounds.

Crime-scene technician Cpl. Leann Cortes said bullets went through the mailbox, the apartment walls and a TV screen inside.

Defense attorneys for the three men on trial say that shooting foreshadowed the violence to come, as their clients heard about it, and it put them on edge, anticipating a similar assault.

Two are brothers, Terrance Upshaw, 31, represented by Shevon Thomas II, and Homer Upshaw, 28, represented by William Kendrick; and the third is Rodderick Quaterrius Glanton, 28, represented by Allen C. Jones.

How they heard about the earlier shooting was unclear. Baldwin, 26, said he is friends with Homer Upshaw, who is “like a brother” to him, but insisted he never told Upshaw about it. “I kept that to myself,” Baldwin said.

He had some doubts about calling the police, he said, but felt his sister had to, having been shot at. “You give the police somebody’s name, that’s snitching,” he said.

He was at the 30th Street home two days later when he heard the barrage of gunfire coming from Seventh Avenue, he said, and called Homer Upshaw to ask whether he was OK.

Homer said he was, Baldwin testified, and said no more.

Alleged gang war

Gang prosecutors for Georgia’s attorney general say the trio on trial are members of the Marlow Gang.

The defense attorneys say the victims were affiliated with the Zohannon street gang, which targeted their clients for a drive-by shooting, repeatedly passing by the Seventh Avenue house in a Dodge Dart, at least two of them with guns and two wearing masks.

Surveillance cameras at Columbus’ Wilson Homes apartments, across the street from the house, recorded flashes of gunfire from outside the house on the Dart’s fifth pass.

Police Cpl. Adam Breeden, another crime-scene investigator, testified Monday that the Dart had bullet holes from the driver’s side around to its rear.

Police responding to calls from alarmed neighbors found Pugh dead in the back seat, shot through the head, his hands on an AR-style, .22-caliber rifle with an extended clip. Ransom, the driver, was found in tall weeds on the roadside.

Two other teens in the car were wounded: Shot three times in the back, Wandray Harris, who was 19 years old, was in the back seat beside Pugh.

Ta’Journey Lee, who was 16, was shot once in the back in the front passenger’s seat, before he went to a nearby apartment for help.

Though prosecutors Cara Convery and T. McKenzie Gray have had a series of witnesses present evidence that the three suspects were at the scene that night, the defense has not disputed that, instead arguing their clients had a right to shoot first to defend themselves.

They said Ransom was in the same Dodge Cart on June 12, 2021, when he shot at Baldwin, and the suspects were on the lookout for it two days later.

They have denied the three are in the Marlow gang associated with US World.

Homicide detectives have said the Zohannons and US World had a gang war in 2021, a factor in the 70 homicides Columbus reported that year, a recent peak.

Besides murder, a 21-count indictment charges all three defendants with aggravated assault, criminal damage to property, possessing guns while committing felonies, and violating Georgia’s Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act.

Homer Upshaw has additional weapons and drug trafficking charges because of a prior felony conviction, and because police said he had 10 pounds of marijuana when they arrested him July 26, 2021.