Jalin Jay Hammons, an 18-year-old Black male, was killed late on the night of January 17, 2025, outside the B&E Food Mart at 1097 Hollywood Road NW in Atlanta. Police were called to the scene just after 11 p.m. on a report of a person shot, and when officers arrived they found him lying in the parking lot with multiple gunshot wounds. Medical personnel pronounced him dead there, turning the food mart lot into the center of a homicide investigation that began with scattered evidence,
surveillance review, and witness accounts of a chaotic encounter in the dark.
Early reporting painted the moments before the shooting as sudden and tense. Investigators said there had been a verbal exchange between Hammons and people inside a black sedan, and then gunfire erupted. Witnesses also told police they saw a dark Hyundai Sonata leaving the area, a car described as having a CarMax tag and a broken taillight cover on the driver’s side. As detectives worked backward from those details, the case increasingly appeared to be more than a random confrontation. Later reporting and police updates said the shooting was tied to a robbery, giving the killing an even colder edge and suggesting that what happened in that parking lot was part of a coordinated crime rather than a fleeting argument alone.
For weeks, the case remained unresolved in public, with police releasing limited details while investigators pursued leads. Hammons’ death drew grief from those close to him, and public fundraising created after the shooting described a young man whose family believed he had been trying to change the direction of his life and move toward something better. That sense of interrupted possibility hung over the case as the investigation widened beyond Atlanta.
The break came in early March 2025. According to Atlanta police, 19-year-old Jabral Rice was located on March 1, 2025, at the Houston County Jail in Georgia and identified as a suspect in the homicide. A few days later, on March 5, 2025, authorities with the help of the United States Marshals Service took 18-year-old Tremon Palmer and 19-year-old Damarion Benson into custody in Romeo, Michigan. Police said all three were wanted in connection with the killing and were to be extradited back to Atlanta.
The charges described by police were serious and extensive. Rice was charged with murder, aggravated assault, armed robbery, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, conspiracy to commit a felony, and tampering with evidence. Benson was charged with murder, aggravated assault, armed robbery, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, conspiracy to commit a felony, and tampering with evidence as well. Palmer was charged with murder, armed robbery, and conspiracy to commit a felony. In public reporting, the arrests transformed the case from an unsolved street killing into a prosecution centered on three young men accused of taking Hammons’ life outside a neighborhood store, after an encounter that began with words and ended in gunfire.
