Kayla Dixon and Nathaniel Vivian thought they had the perfect plan to secure a PlayStation 4 gaming system, a Sandy Springs police detective testified Tuesday.
They would do all of their research. Cover their tracks. Find someone selling a PS4 on Craigslist. And rob them at gunpoint for it, David Lapides said.
It was perfect until the 16-year-old Dixon panicked and in a fit of nerves on Sept. 12 allegedly shot and killed 28-year-old Daniel John Zeitz, also injuring her boyfriend in the process, Lapides said.
The detective testified in a Fulton County courtroom that Dixon and Vivian used their cellphones to coordinate the robbery and their computers to plot how to do it.
“There were numerous text messages between Dixon and Vivian discussing plans to rob someone,” Lapides said. “They discussed getting the address. How they wanted to do it — come at him with the gun (or) surprise him and catch him when he came outside. Go inside the apartment. These messages went back and forth for a while.”
On Tuesday, Dixon sat calmly as Fulton County Superior Court Judge Karen Smith Woodson denied her bail and ruled that she will be tried as an adult in the killing of Zeitz.
“The court is not inclined to grant bond,” Woodson said. “She poses a significant set of danger to herself and the community.”
Vivian, 20, who is being held in the Fulton County Jail without bond, also was scheduled to appear in court Tuesday but waived his hearing.
The two face charges of murder, aggravated assault, possession of a firearm and possession of stolen property, among other things.
Detective Lapides testified that on Sept. 5, Vivian researched online, “how to rob someone.”
The day before, Lapides said, Vivian looked up “how to fake a text message.”
The couple found Zeitz, an avid gamer, through Craigslist and set up a meeting to buy his PS4 at his apartment. They took Dixon’s infant daughter with them on the robbery, the detective said.
Dixon “was nervous and took the gun out from the glove box and put it between her knees,” Lapides said, adding that when Zeitz came down and handed Vivian the PS4 and the cords, Vivian tried to drive off. Zeitz struggled to retain his property.
“Kayla got nervous and shot him,” Lapides said.
The “nervous” Dixon, however, was nowhere to be found in court. Instead, the petite 16-year-old calmly walked into the courtroom and took her seat between her two attorneys.
Despite allowing cameras and the media in the courtroom, Judge Woodson refused to allow them to take photographs of Dixon’s face, “for her safety.”
Dixon wore her hair in a bun with brownish-blonde streaks sticking out of the top. She was dressed in dark blue prison pants and a faded blue prison top. She was chained. She never addressed her lawyers and showed no emotion during Lapides’ testimony or during Woodson’s ruling.
Her mother, who had been waiting for hours for the hearing to start, sat quietly in the back of the courtroom. Earlier, a deputy warmly cautioned her about making emotional outbursts in open court. Like her daughter, she never said a word.
Dixon “was very calm today,” Lapides said later. “That is how she was when she told me what happened. Not nervous like she said she was during the shooting.”
Dixon’s attorney Kenya Taylor, in pleading her client’s case for bond, said the Dixon that was in court Tuesday is the same teenager that her family knows.
Taylor said Dixon was currently a junior at the Montgomery Academy, an online public school. The last regular school she attended was Chamblee Charter High School, where she completed the 10th grade.
“She made straight A’s. She has no juvenile record, no prior arrests, and is taking care of her now 17-month-old daughter,” Taylor said, adding that Dixon left her traditional school to raise her child.
Taylor said Dixon’s mother was willing to supervise her daughter, but the judge rejected it. Assistant Fulton County District Attorney Michael Sprinkel argued that Dixon’s home, where she was already an early teenage mother and was allowed to date a 20-year-old, was not a conducive environment for her to be in while she awaits trial. She is due back in court in two weeks.
Zeitz’s parents, John and Patty Zeitz, and his brother Mike were in the courtroom, along with a host of supporters. They did not speak, but family friend Bob Levy offered a statement before Woodson’s ruling.
“Each day we awake with the shocking realization that the life as we knew it with our son and brother will no longer exist,” Levy said. “The loss of Danny has reached the depths of our souls. Daniel’s entire future was brutally ripped from him in a senseless act of violence.”
According to initial Sandy Springs police reports, the three met at about 9:30 p.m. During the struggle, police say Dixon fired a shot from a handgun. The bullet ripped through Vivian’s hand and hit Zeitz in the chest, killing him.
The couple drove themselves to Northside Hospital for treatment of Vivian’s wound. They initially told Brookhaven Police detectives that they had been robbery victims, before confessing.
Lapides said Dixon shot Zeitz with a Serbian-made Zastava: “Not an everyday type of firearm.”
“This was not a spontaneous decision,” Sprinkel said. “The two were discussing the use of the firearm. This was a premeditated armed robbery.”
At the end of the hearing, Dixon stood up and waited for a deputy to return her to the Metro Regional Detention Center in Atlanta.
She didn’t look back.
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