Felicia Sullivan, a 50-year-old Black woman from Marietta, was killed on April 19, 2021, inside the Goldie Drive home she shared with Willie Felix Thompson, the man prosecutors later proved was responsible for her death. What emerged in court was not the picture of a sudden, inexplicable tragedy, but of a relationship that had been unraveling under threats, violence, and fear long before the final gunshots were fired. Sullivan and Thompson had been involved for years, and testimony later described earlier episodes in which he slapped her, choked her, threatened her, interfered with a 911 call, and even pointed a gun at her during prior confrontations.
On the day she died, Thompson told jurors he had returned to the house to collect belongings before leaving for Mississippi, but the evidence painted a more troubling scene. According to the Georgia Supreme Court’s summary of the trial evidence, he came back without moving boxes or a truck, grilled outside with a 9mm pistol on him, then went back into the house with the gun still in his hand. He claimed Sullivan, whom he described as intoxicated, confronted him and that a struggle followed in the hallway before the weapon fired. But forensic evidence and the physical scene did not fit that version. Investigators found Sullivan shot in the back bedroom, and testimony showed one bullet struck near her mouth and another entered her neck. Ballistics evidence indicated the shots were fired from varying distances, not in the tight struggle Thompson described, and police found his pistol on the bed beside her. Gunshot residue on his hands and bullet damage in the bedroom mirror further undercut his claim of self-defense.
What happened after the shooting also became part of the story prosecutors used to show consciousness of guilt. Thompson did not call 911. Instead, according to court findings, he video-called his sister in Mississippi, crying and saying he had shot “Tiny,” Sullivan’s nickname. His relatives then reached out to family in Georgia, and by the time a relative arrived at the house, Thompson admitted again that he had shot her. Police responding to the 911 call found him intoxicated outside the home, while Sullivan lay dead inside. He was arrested without incident that night, initially reported as being charged in the fatal domestic violence case, and the case quickly moved from an apparent domestic shooting to a murder prosecution.
The suspect in Sullivan’s death was Thompson, and the case did not remain unresolved. A Cobb County grand jury indicted him on July 1, 2021, on charges including malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. In April 2022, after a jury trial, he was found guilty on all counts. The trial judge sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole for malice murder, plus a consecutive five-year term for the firearm offense. Thompson later appealed, arguing that the evidence was insufficient and that the jury instructions were flawed, but in October 2024 the Supreme Court of Georgia upheld his convictions, leaving the verdict and sentence in place. In the end, the record shows not just an arrest, but a prosecution that concluded with a murder conviction and a life-without-parole sentence for the man jurors determined killed Felicia Sullivan in her own home.
