Four years after an Atlanta man who brokered a sizable marijuana deal was gunned down, the second of two buyers who turned on him now faces life behind bars, Fulton County prosecutors said Friday.
Authorities said Kasey Cogburn knew he was in trouble on Oct. 22, 2008 when he’d followed the two buyers to an Atlanta apartment to get a “finders fee” for arranging the deal. The fee was a cut of the marijuana he’d earlier delivered at a car wash on Northside Drive.
The buyers, Travius Taylor and LaForrest Rush, felt they had overpaid for the marijuana, prosecutors said. Taylor, also known as “Stacks,” and LaForrest suspected Cogburn was in on the scam arranged by the seller, identified as “Big.”
Realizing his life was in danger, prosecutors said Cogburn called his girlfriend:
“Stacks has a gun to my head,” the 29-year-old man said, according to prosecutors. “Big double-crossed him, and he thinks I had something to do with it. I love you.”
Prosecutors said the phone went dead. A short time later, neighbors told police they heard gunshots and found Cogburn in the doorway of the apartment after his killers had stepped over him and fled in a pickup truck. He had bullet wounds to his liver, kidney, lung and heart.
A Fulton County judge on Thursday sentenced Taylor to life plus five years for his role in the killing after a jury found him guilty of felony murder and related charges. Rush already had been sentenced to life in April 2011.
Rush was arrested two weeks after the killing when he returned to the apartment complex. Taylor was caught about a month later with about 4 pounds of marijuana at another Atlanta apartment.
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