The three GameStop shooting suspects will face all the charges originally brought on them — including murder, armed robbery, and kidnapping — in Superior Court after Rockdale County Magistrate Court Judge Clarence Horne determined Wednesday there was enough probable cause.
During testimony in Magistrate Court, Conyers Police Department Lt. Jackie Dunn described the unique confluence of circumstances that helped foil the suspects’ getaway efforts.
Giovannte Maddox, 27, of Atlanta, and Tron Hill, 25, and Markus Isiah Seymore, 17, were charged with murder, two counts of armed robbery, kidnapping, two counts of aggravated assault, aggravated battery, obstruction and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. The three allegedly robbed the Conyers GameStop, on Dogwood Drive, at gunpoint on Nov. 11 and shot customer Adrian Snow, 40, who later died from his wounds.
On the day of the robbery, Hill and Seymore picked up Maddox, who served as a lookout. Maddox reportedly said he knew the group did robberies as a money-making operation and brought game consoles to sell in the Edgewood area in Atlanta.
They first stopped at the ABC package store in Conyers to buy sodas and then dropped Maddox off to canvass the GameStop store while the other two waited in the vehicle in the parking lot. Maddox ducked into another store and called to report to Hill and Seymore that there was an older white woman customer in the store.
Maddox saw the two go into the GameStop, after the customer had left.
Inside the store, the pair tied up the employee in the back of the store. While they were ransacking the store, customer Adrian Snow knocked on the locked door, intending to return a borrowed game. The two suspects let him in and as they tried to take him to the back to tie him up, he reportedly pleaded, “Man, you don’t have to do me like that.” Snow reportedly told detectives, before he died, that he was not going out on his belly, or tied up.
Snow was shot and later found to have a wound in his hand and near his shoulder. Dunn said the bullet hit a blood-carrying vessel and Snow died while in surgery for a second time. Seymore reportedly admitted to Dunn he had done the shooting.
Hill and Seymore ran out of the store — but not before taking Snow’s wallet — and jumped into the vehicle and took off.
Seymore reportedly said as he ran out of GameStop, “I f---ed up, I f---ed up. He tried to fight me.”
Hill and Seymore reportedly sped east on Dogwood Drive to the Salem Road interstate entrance and got on I-20 heading towards Atlanta.
However, once on the interstate, the vehicle suddenly stopped working.
The vehicle, a green Chevy Blazer, had been stolen in Fulton County in a carjacking at gunpoint.
The owner of the Blazer later explained to the CPD that he had installed a Mexican after-market fuel gage.
“That fuel gage is the reverse of what we use,” said Dunn. When the needle is to the right, that indicates the tank is empty instead of full.
Hill and Seymore pulled over to the side just before the exit ramp to Ga. 138 – almost back where they started near the GameStop. They reportedly called Maddox by phone to help unload from the truck the stolen game consoles and goods.
While they were unloading the truck, they heard police cars approaching. Hill and Seymore took off running and jumped into the dried retention pond next to Don Tello’s restaurant. Hill was caught and Seymore escaped into the sewer system.
Maddox was found walking along the side of the road, about 10 feet away from a black handgun, and arrested.
Seymore spent the night crawling around disoriented in the sewer system He reportedly described rubbing his knees raw on the concrete and being bitten by rats and unidentified things that crawled over him throughout the night.
He later came up through a manhole in the median of I-20 — again almost back where he had started not too far from the GameStop — during rushhour the next morning and was caught after a chase near Old Salem Road and Ga. Highway 138 behind the Suntrust Bank.