AUGUSTA, Ga. – In the security video, the encounter between the teens takes less than 60 seconds. At the end, one is dead. Thursday, the second one was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
It used to be that disputes were settled with fist fights; “now everybody brings guns,” said Judge J. Wade Padgett who presided over Nigel Robinson’s murder trial in Richmond County Superior Court.
The jury deliberated several hours over a two-day period before finding Robinson, now 21, guilty of felony murder and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime.
Robinson’s disagreement with 17-year-old Roshawn White Jr. left the teen dead from a gunshot wound. White was accosted and shot after holding out a hand in greeting to Robinson the morning of Sept. 30, 2018, outside the S & S Food Store on Barton Chapel Road.
“There were no winners in all this,” Padgett said Thursday after the jury returned its verdict.
Brendan Harris told a jury this week that White was his best friend. The two had spent the night before at Harris’ home and they had walked over to the store to wait for a ride.
Harris, then 16, testified this week he thought something was wrong when Robinson and 16-year-old Arquette Jones walked over to White. He saw Robinson pull a gun and he went after Robinson, trying to help. Robinson was grabbing for White’s bag and Harris said he yanked it away and pulled a gun from inside. He shot at Robinson. All four teens ran.
White ran inside the store where he collapsed.
Jones was initially charged with murder along with his cousin Robinson. He pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of concealing the death of another. In exchange for his testimony, a prison term is to be suspended and he will have five years of probation.
Robinson’s sentence of life in prison will be served with the possibility of parole. In Georgia, that means he will have to serve 30 years before the parole board will ever consider his case.
