Three 18-year-old young men were taken into custody in connection with the horrific shooting of a 15-year-old girl, shot dead in her bedroom at her home in Georgia, police said.
The Peachtree City Police Department identified the three assailants as Jacobean Brown, Justus Smith, and Yeshua Mathis, all residents of Fayetteville.
Authorities have charged them with the murder of Madison Gesswein, 15.
Gesswein’s family told the police that Jacobean Brown’s father had been found dead, shot in a bank parking lot on February 10 in South Fulton, Georgia. It is unclear if the murders are related.
The 15-year-old girl, a Whitewater High School student, was found dead in her bed by her mother on February 21 in their apartment at 6 am.
The police department said they are still waiting for her autopsy report, which will determine her cause of death, but responding officers found her with a head injury consistent with a gunshot wound.
Gesswein’s mother called 911 immediately after finding her daughter lying in bed, bleeding profusely from her head. With the instructions of the dispatcher, she tried to give her daughter emergency CPR.
She also informed the dispatcher that she found the windows in her daughter’s bedroom open and that the blinds had been messed with.
Although the police don’t yet know what the motive for the gruesome murder was, they said that the suspects and the victim knew each other.
During a news conference on Wednesday, Assistant Chief of the Peachtree Police Matt Myers said that the murder was not random, adding that the suspects knew whose house they were in and that the killing must have been related to something between the individuals.
It is still unclear how the suspects got into the apartment, but the window from the girl’s bedroom was taken in for forensic analysis.
Gesswein’s friend, Jada Zimbabwe, said she was shocked to hear of her friend’s passing. Zimbabwe said Gesswein did not do anything to anyone that could warrant her murder.
Deputies from the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office arrested one suspect after he fled from home and found another at the same residence. Officers arrested the third suspect the next day in Fayetteville.
The three suspects are held in the Fayette County Jail. They may face additional charges as the investigation continues.