Jamal Colson, a 31-year-old man, was killed just after midnight on June 27, 2022, at the 7-Star Food Mart on North Davis Drive in Warner Robins, where what began as an argument at the gas pumps suddenly turned deadly. Local reports said Colson was at the pumps when a woman he was arguing with pulled a gun and shot him. As panic spread across the station, the violence widened beyond him.
Investigators said the shooter then fired toward other people at the scene, striking two women before turning back and shooting Colson again, leaving him dead near the pumps as the gunfire sent bystanders scrambling for cover.
Police quickly identified the suspect as Surayah Johnson of Warner Robins, who was 22 at the time of the shooting. She was arrested later that same day and booked into the Houston County Detention Center. Early coverage said she faced felony murder, multiple counts of aggravated assault, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. The case stood out not only because Colson was killed in a public place in the opening minutes of a summer morning, but because two other women were wounded in the same burst of violence, turning the shooting into a broader assault scene rather than a single-victim homicide.
As the case moved through court, prosecutors pursued the killing as more than a chaotic argument gone wrong. In February 2024, before a jury trial was set to begin, Surayah Guyana Johnson pleaded guilty to malice murder and two counts of aggravated assault in Houston County Superior Court. Reports citing the district attorney’s office said the plea ended the need for trial testimony and brought the case to a close with a life sentence on the murder charge, along with two 20-year sentences on the aggravated assault counts to run concurrently. In the end, the public record shows that the investigation did produce an arrest, a named suspect, a guilty plea, and a conviction, with Johnson sentenced to spend the rest of her life in prison for the shooting that killed Colson and injured two others.
