Tishaa Nicole Moulton, a 26-year-old Black woman, was killed on May 13, 2021, when gunfire erupted at the Magnolia Court Apartments at 201 East Telfair Street in Augusta, Georgia. Richmond County deputies were dispatched to the complex at about 5:30 p.m. after reports of shots being fired and people being injured. Inside an apartment, deputies found Moulton unresponsive with gunshot wounds and her mother, Taliha Turner, also wounded. Latoya Oglesby was found unresponsive in a stairwell.
Coroner Mark Bowen and a deputy coroner pronounced Moulton and Oglesby dead at the scene at 6:29 p.m.
The shooting affected several other people in and around the apartment. Turner was rushed to Augusta University Medical Center in critical condition, while Shantel Anderson suffered a gunshot wound to her arm and was treated and released. Druscilla Kent and Ashley Johnson-Bradford were also fired upon but escaped without physical injuries. Moulton's children were inside the apartment during the violence but were not physically hurt. Years later, Turner said the shooting left her paralyzed and described the attack as having taken her daughter, her mobility and her home.
Investigators learned that deputies had already been called to Magnolia Court roughly an hour before the shooting because of an altercation involving Moulton and Kent. The two women gave conflicting accounts of how the confrontation began. Kent told a deputy that she had gone to Moulton's apartment to question why police had been called on her and alleged that Moulton struck her after the two confronted one another. Moulton told the deputy that Kent had been kicking and hitting her door and struck her after she opened it. The dispute eventually moved into the parking lot before ending. Because the accounts conflicted and the responding deputy observed no visible injuries, authorities could not determine who was the victim in that incident and made no arrest. Investigators later examined whether the earlier confrontation had any connection to the subsequent gunfire.
An autopsy later revealed another devastating detail: Moulton was in the early stages of pregnancy when she was killed. Richmond County Coroner Mark Bowen reported that her fatal injury was a gunshot wound to the chest. Moulton was the mother of four children and was deaf; relatives and local reporting described her children as having been present when the shooting occurred.
Investigators quickly focused on Moulton's brother, Tyler Dashawn Prather. He was arrested on May 14, the day after the shooting. Initial charges included two counts of murder, two counts of aggravated assault and a firearm offense. Arrest-warrant affidavits alleged that Prather fired multiple rounds from a firearm, striking Moulton in the torso and causing her death. The warrants also accused him of shooting Turner and Anderson. Prather was initially held without bond while the Richmond County Sheriff's Office continued investigating what had happened inside the apartment.
The investigation briefly produced another arrest. Julian Floyd Mayes was taken into custody after authorities considered whether he might have been a second person involved in the shooting. Within days, however, investigators said evidence established that Mayes was not involved in the homicide. After consultation with the District Attorney's Office, all charges against him were dismissed and he was released. At that stage of the investigation, the sheriff's office said it was still seeking another unidentified person whose possible involvement had not yet been established.
Prather's prosecution continued for several years before reaching trial in May 2025. District Attorney Jared Williams announced that after a four-day trial, the jury deliberated for less than an hour before finding Prather guilty on all counts in the killings of Moulton and Oglesby and the related violence. The prosecution included not only murder allegations but charges stemming from the death of Moulton's unborn child and the attacks on the surviving victims.
Judge John Flythe imposed an extraordinarily lengthy sentence. Prather received three consecutive life-without-parole sentences connected to the murders, an additional life sentence for feticide, and another 130 years of imprisonment. Court records from 2026 list charges in the case including malice murder, multiple felony-murder counts, feticide, aggravated assault, possession of a firearm during the commission of felonies and criminal damage to property. Those records also show that Prather's case entered post-trial proceedings, with a motion-for-new-trial status conference scheduled for April 17, 2026. As recently as August 2026, local reporting continued to describe Prather as convicted in the murders and serving the life sentences imposed after trial.
