A second suspect was arrested on Wednesday for the murder of 8-year-old Secoriea Turner in Atlanta, Georgia. The murder took place in the summer of 2020.
Turner was killed in Atlanta in July, 2020, in the Wendy's parking lot where protests were being held over the police shooting of Rayshard Brooks, who was killed in June of 2020. Turner's death prompted Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms to declare that protestors would no longer be permitted to demonstrate there.
Turner was riding in a car with her mother and another adult on July 4, 2020, when a group shot at the car multiple times. Turner died at a nearby hospital.
According to arrest warrants, Jerrion McKinney is accused of manning the protest barricades with other armed vigilantes, who prosecutors called "other co-conspirators." The vigilantes had assembled near protestors at the burned Wendy's, where Rayshard Brooks had previously been shot and killed, the night Secoriea was shot and then chased the car she was riding in following the gunfire.
Mckinney is being charged as a party to the crime in the shooting, while the first suspect, Julian Conley, is being charged as the shooter. McKinney faces felony murder and aggravated assault. Both face gang related charges as well.
Authorities used social media, photographic evidence and criminal history, to determine that McKinney and Conley were involved with the Bloods gang.
The warrant stated, "Atlanta Police Department officers were not allowed into the area and the Bloods gang and its associates operated the area as an 'autonomous zone' in which the sovereign authority of the City of State were not recognized, and the Bloods gang exerted all control."
According to the warrant the gang "controlled the area ... through the use of barricades and violence through the brandishing, pointing, and discharging of firearms at citizens and civilians to ensure compliance with their authority in a highly visible manner."
Conley and McKinney also face charges regarding two other previous incidents that night, one in which a bus driver was stopped at gunpoint before being allowed through the barricade, and another in which a driver and a passenger were forced to turn around at gunpoint.
The warrants stated that when the car young Turner was in arrived at the barricade at 9:46 pm. The driver tried to go around the barricade and Conley allegedly fired at the car. A bullet struck the girl in the head while she was sitting in the backseat. "As the vehicle passed, McKinney chased the vehicle down the road away from the area.”
The driver and Turner's mother immediately drove to the hospital after the shooting, where the girl was pronounced dead.
Last month, a complaint filed by the Turner family in Fulton County State Court said that it was the many failures of elected leaders, "including that they were negligent in their duties by failing to remove armed vigilantes who had gathered alongside peaceful protestors at the Wendy's where Rayshard Brooks was shot and killed."
Named in the complaint are Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms as well as Atlanta Police Chief Rodney Bryant, City Councilmember Joyce Sheperd and Wendy's International. The family is being represented by The Cochran Firm, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
After Turner's shooting in July, Bottoms said that "enough is enough," and demanded that the protestors vacate the parking lot. Bottoms declared that protestors would no longer be permitted at the Wendy's where Rayshard Brooks was shot and killed in June.
"Now we are demanding action for Secoriea Turner, and all other people who were shot in Atlanta last night," Bottoms said during a news conference at the time.
"Enough is enough. If you want people to take us seriously and you don't want us to lose this movement, we can't lose each other."
It was in October that Mawuli Davis, who represents the Turner family, said they were considering a suit. At the time, Davis told the city they had 30 days to either come to the table to negotiate a settlement or they would be looking at a $16 million lawsuit.
"They knew that at least on two other occasions people had been shot," Davis said in October. "They knew there were armed vigilantes blockading a public street, and they took no action."
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