In the summer of 2017, the life of 16-year-old Chase Allen Gillis, a Caucasian male from Lizella, Georgia, was tragically cut short. On July 12, what was initially reported as a gun swap at a residence on Briar Creek Trail turned into a fatal encounter. Gillis had gone to the home with the intention of trading a Glock pistol for an AR-15. Inside the house with him were 19-year-old Logan Nettles, a resident of the home also known as 'Carrot Top,' and 23-year-old David Billingsley.
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initial account of the incident suggested that the situation escalated when Gillis allegedly pointed his own weapon at Nettles. In what was described as an act of self-defense, Billingsley then shot Gillis in the head with an AR-15, leading to his immediate death at the scene. In the immediate aftermath, both Nettles and Billingsley fled the house but were soon located by deputies nearby. Billingsley informed investigators that he had discarded his pistol in a storm drain in the woods. At the time, no charges were filed against either Nettles or Billingsley as the investigation continued. The home where the shooting occurred was reportedly a frequent location for law enforcement calls, with deputies having been dispatched to the residence 19 times in the year leading up to the fatal shooting for various reasons, including multiple reports of shots fired.
However, as the Bibb County Sheriff's Office delved deeper into the case, the narrative of self-defense began to unravel. Years after the initial incident, in August 2022, a grand jury indicted both Logan Nettles and David Billingsley on charges of felony murder. The indictment revealed that investigators believed the two men had actually been attempting to rob Gillis, and the shooting was not a justifiable act of self-defense as first claimed. This new development shifted the perspective of the case from a tragic accident to an alleged premeditated crime.
At the time of the murder indictment, Logan Nettles was already incarcerated, serving a five-year sentence in federal prison on an unrelated gun charge. The indictment brought a new legal chapter to a case that had remained under a cloud of uncertainty for five years, offering a potential path to justice for the death of Chase Gillis. The subsequent legal proceedings and the outcome of the trial for the felony murder charges were not detailed in the available online sources.
