In August 2014, 21-year-old Briana Brooks and her 23-year-old fiancé, Jeonta Brown, were kidnapped at gunpoint from in front of Brown's mother's house in DeKalb County, Georgia. The couple had just returned from a late-night food run. For hours, their captors held them and called family members demanding a ransom.
The kidnappers, later identified as Andre Gay and Richard Wilson, had been under the mistaken belief that a relative of the couple had recently received a large sum of money
from an insurance settlement. When their ransom demands were not met, they drove the couple to a location in northwest Atlanta. There, they forced the handcuffed couple to their knees and shot them both in the back of the head in an execution-style slaying before leaving them on the side of the road.
When police arrived, they found Brown deceased at the scene. Brooks, who was seven months pregnant, was discovered unconscious but still alive, gasping for air. She was rushed to Grady Hospital where doctors were able to deliver her baby girl, who was two months premature. Briana Brooks died several days later on September 3, 2014, after being removed from life support. At the time of their deaths, Brooks and Brown were also parents to two other young children.
The investigation led to the arrests of Andre Gay and Richard 'Fathead' Wilson. It was discovered that the two men had met in prison and were both out on parole at the time of the murders. Investigators connected them to at least seven murders in Fulton County since 1990. In September 2018, Gay, then 44, and Wilson, then 46, pleaded guilty to numerous charges including murder, feticide, and kidnapping. They were each sentenced to four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
