Jaivontavious Sellers, a Black 18-year-old man, left Union Springs and ended up in downtown Tuskegee in the early hours of July 8, 2017, when the night broke open with gunfire. Police said he was shot around 2:20 a.m. along the 200 block of East Martin Luther King Highway, a stretch that sits close to the heart of the city; by morning, the scene had become a homicide investigation, with investigators trying to untangle who had been there, who had fired, and why it happened in that moment.
As officers canvassed and followed leads, Tuskegee Police announced they had developed multiple suspects and made an early arrest. That same day, they identified Kayonna Robinson, 18, as being “in connection” with the case and charged her with hindering prosecution, signaling investigators believed she had helped someone involved after the shooting rather than pulling the trigger herself. The case widened beyond a single victim, too—authorities tied the gunfire to additional violence that night, describing charges later brought in the case as including attempted murders and gunfire directed into an occupied vehicle.
Three days after the killing, on July 11, police said they made what they called a second arrest: Anthony Williford, 24, of Tuskegee. Investigators charged him with murder, two counts of attempted murder, and shooting into an occupied vehicle, and reported he was held in the Macon County Detention Center on a $234,000 bond. Even with him in custody, police said the story was not finished—another suspect, they believed, was still out there, and the investigation remained active as they worked to close the gap between the violence on the street and the people they believed were responsible.
