A man was sentenced to prison Wednesday in a 2019 shooting at a DeKalb County motel, officials said.
Jurors returned guilty verdicts against Christopher Sellers, 45, on charges of murder, aggravated assault, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 15 years, in the death of 24-year-old Thedarious Mitchell, the DeKalb District Attorney’s Office announced.
On April 2, 2019, officers were called to the Economy Hotel on Glenfair Road just outside I-285 and found Mitchell lying in the hallway with a gunshot wound. He was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital, where he died.
The victim’s girlfriend said the couple were in their room when someone knocked on the door. Mitchell opened it, and two men immediately began fighting with him, district attorney’s office spokeswoman Claire Chaffins said in a news release. One of the men then pistol-whipped Mitchell and shot him as he tried to run away, Chaffins added.
Mitchell’s girlfriend told police that she knew the shooter as “Baldhead” or “Chris,” and confirmed that she had worked for him in the past.
Investigators were later able to identify the shooter as Sellers and arrest him in Nevada. While he was in custody there, he “bragged to a cellmate that he had shot Mitchell,” Chaffins said.
According to the Georgia Department of Corrections, Sellers has served prison time on three separate occasions since 1998 for various crimes committed in DeKalb. Mitchell’s killing happened about four months after Sellers was released from the Riverbend Correctional Facility in Milledgeville after serving time since January 2016 for aggravated assault.
