In the small community of Itta Bena, Mississippi, the life of 17-year-old Knicholas Bradley was tragically cut short on the night of January 15, 2017. The young man, a student at Leflore County High School, was fatally shot in what investigators determined to be an act of retaliation. The shooting was the grim culmination of a dispute that had started earlier with a gunfight outside a local club, an altercation that left two other men wounded.
The investigation into Knicholas's death led
to the arrests of four young men. Initially, Demarcio Barnes, 18, was charged with murder and shooting into an occupied dwelling. He was soon joined by Cedric Cross, 19, Devonte Demond Williams, 18, and Andraus Griggs, 18, who faced the same charges. The case against the four men proceeded, and in November 2017, a grand jury indicted all of them for first-degree murder.
As the legal process unfolded, the initial charges were amended. In August 2018, Demarcio Baines and Devonte Williams pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter. Andraus Griggs entered a guilty plea for conspiracy to shoot into a dwelling. Cedric Cross also pleaded guilty to manslaughter and the additional charge of shooting into the house where Bradley was at the time of his death. For his role in the fatal shooting, Cedric Cross was sentenced to a total of thirty years in the Mississippi Department of Corrections. The other three awaited their sentencing, which was scheduled for later that month. The resolution of the case brought a measure of closure to a community shaken by the violent loss of a young life.
