Bobby Tillman and his accused attackers didn’t know each other. They attended different high schools. They ran with different crowds.
But when their lives intersected last Nov. 6, it resulted in a tragedy that, nine months later, still has many in Douglas County shaking their heads.
Tillman was beaten to death in front of a Douglasville house where two teenage girls were throwing a party to celebrate good grades. Earlier this month, on what would have been Tillman’s 19th birthday, the Douglas County district attorney David McDade filed court papers indicating he plans to seek the death penalty against two of four young men accused in the attack.
For some, the callousness of the killing has changed their opinion on the death penalty. Others have concerned themselves less with the punishment the accused might receive and more with trying to prevent such tragedies from happening in the future.
“People are very, very angry and upset about what happened,” said state Rep. Roger Bruce.
“For the most part, the African-American community, including myself, are not advocates for the death penalty. In this case, I don’t think you’re going to get anybody to stand up against it,” said Bruce, a Democrat whose district includes Tillman’s family’s home.
Emanuel Boykins, Tracen Franklin, Quantez Devonta Mallory and Horace Damon Coleman were among dozens who crashed what was to have been a party for about 10 teens.
Two girls who were not invited to the party started a fight in the house and continued it outside, according to police reports. Police believe Boykins, Franklin, Coleman and Mallory were caught up in the frenzy. The investigation showed that the 5-foot-6, slightly built Tillman was leaning against a car nearby and talking on a cellphone when the four allegedly spotted him and attacked. Tillman was punched and kicked by the much larger men, according to investigators. Motive remains unclear.
Boykins, 18, and Franklin, 19, now face capital murder trials, though no dates have been set. Mallory, 18, and Coleman, 19, face non-capital murder trials.
McDade declined to give his reasons for seeking the death penalty against two. The filings don’t list what aggravating circumstances apply, but a death sentence can be sought if the crime was “heinous, atrocious, cruel, or depraved.”
Tillman died from a tear to his heart that happened during the beating, authorities said. His brutal death shocked his middle- and upper-middle class friends and neighbors and reminded them that their semi-rural communities are not immune from deadly violence.
“For our community, it’s a wake-up call,” said 18-year-old Chauncey Walker, one of Tillman’s friends. “When you hear Douglas County, you think suburb. You don’t go to violence and people getting beat up. We have to do something. A generation is dying. Just because we live in this secluded area, we’re still not safe.
“We’ve lost five members of our generation,” Walker said.
“That’s true,” said attorney Bruce Harvey, who is representing Franklin. “Tracen Franklin is a 19-year-old kid with his life ahead of him. He played football at Douglas County High School. He was a freshman at Alabama State and was going to play football. He was the kid who worked with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in sponsoring a food pantry. ... He went to church at Gathering of Champions in Powder Springs.”
Harvey said Franklin was only in town that weekend to help his mother as she recovered from surgery.
“We are taking productive young kids, with their entire lives in front of them, out of the community and we are saying to the community we want to kill this person.”
Attempts to reach attorneys for the other three were not successful.
Until Tillman’s death, Erinn Hill said she had never given much thought to this kind of crime or to the death penalty.
“I was so angry. I thought they should get the worst possible penalty,” said Hill, who was Tillman’s girlfriend. “But now we can’t just say they should die because he died. That’s not how the world is supposed to go. If they do get life and they do get the death penalty, justice will be served either way.”
Tillman’s mother and some of his friends formed an anti-bullying organization called BFAM — which stands for Bobby’s family — to preach “principles” of staying safe.
“When he was murdered, it made us look at our lives and even scared us,” the 15 teens wrote in literature they hand out when BFAM members give anti-bullying talks to schools, church gatherings and other civic events.
Some teens were afraid to leave their houses while others wanted revenge, they wrote.
“It changes your perception of life,” said Hill.
Tillman was in his first semester at Perimeter College. He attended Impact Church in southwest Atlanta.
He asked days before the party for permission to go to the party after a church program on bullying, and his mother agreed.
“He had a curfew. He had all those things and still something horrible happened to him,” said Monique Rivarde, Tillman’s mother. “He tried his hardest to stay away from that stuff, from that crowd.”
She and her two children moved to Douglasville in June 2010, four years after visiting relatives in the area. Though they lived in the relatively safe neighborhood of West Chester in Los Angeles, she feared street violence in L.A.
“I wanted Bobby and [my daughter] to have a better life. There wasn’t as much crime and violence [in Douglasville]. L.A. was turning into rich and poor, and I was in the middle,” Rivarde, a paralegal, said.
On the outer reaches of the metro area, Douglas County’s population has increased by almost 44 percent in the past decade, but the crime rate has changed little except in the categories of larceny and burglary. Annual murders are typically in the single digits, often fewer than five.
At the party where Tillman died, the parents of the girls hosting the gathering had shut down the music and told everyone to leave around midnight because the gathering had become too large and raucous after blind invitations were sent out via social networks. The kids all spilled out into the yard, where the fights ensued.
The four suspects were arrested within hours and have been in the Douglas County Jail ever since.
McDade offered all four a chance to plead guilty and get a life sentence, avoiding the possibility of the death penalty.
Initially, Boykins was going to accept the offer and a court appearance was scheduled. But the hearing was called off when Boykins changed his mind. The others didn’t take the deal, either.
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