Pair shot Cobb barber, pregnant girlfriend after drug deal went bad

Mugshots of Jermaine Dawayne Henderson, left, and Desire Nichole Collins

Credit: Cobb County Sheriff's Office

Credit: Cobb County Sheriff's Office

Mugshots of Jermaine Dawayne Henderson, left, and Desire Nichole Collins

Jermaine Henderson, armed with a pistol, and Desire Collins ordered the Marietta couple they’d kidnapped out of the car and backed them up to a ridge near a then-unopened SunTrust Park.

Prosecutors say the couple had arranged a marijuana buy in Buckhead for the West Coast drug dealers during January 2016. But the buyers paid in counterfeit money and the dealers blamed the couple.

On Monday, Henderson and Collins were sentenced to life in prison.

READ: Cobb man sentenced for killing CAU junior he lured with Craigslist ad

“It’s not personal, it’s business,” Henderson said before shooting the Marietta barber twice and his pregnant girlfriend twice.

They tumbled down the ridge. Prosecutors say Henderson and Collins drove off in the pregnant woman’s car, leaving them for dead. They didn’t die, but the woman did lose her child.

READ - Warrant: After raping woman in dorm, KSU student texted to apologize

Collins, 22, will be eligible for parole after 30 years. Henderson, 36, won’t have that chance and was given an extra 120 years onto his life sentence.

“This absolutely was personal,” said Shep Orlow, a prosecutor on the case. “Shooting two people at point-blank range, intending to kill them? It doesn’t get any more personal than that.”

As it stands, they’ll spend the rest of their lives thousands of miles from home: Collins was living in Everett outside Seattle and Henderson hailed from metro Los Angeles’ Compton.

READ - Awaiting shooting trial, Cobb felon indicted for stabbing prisoner

They came from the West Coast to sell dozens of pounds of marijuana, prosecutors said. A childhood friend of Henderson connected him to the barber.

About an hour after the shooting, Henderson and Collins drove the girlfriends’ Toyota Camry to a Chevron on Cobb Parkway. There, Collins bought $3 of gas and filled up a 32 ounce Powerade bottle, according to a warrant.

She didn’t go back for the change, but they torched the car on an industrial stretch of Franklin Road.

They were sentenced on charges of assault, battery, armed robbery, carjacking, kidnapping, arson and tampering with evidence.

Like Cobb County News Now on Facebook | Follow on Twitter

More than 300 pounds of explosives collapsed the steel in the upper ring and about 4,500 pounds of dynamite intended to crumble the concrete columns of the Atlanta institution of the last 25 years. Watch as this time lapse catches the last sun rise over the Georgia Dome. (Video by Ryon Horne/AJC)