Superior Court Judge Lovett Bennett Jr. concluded a hearing Tuesday afternoon at the Bulloch County Judicial Annex in Statesboro by sentencing Lee Allen Mayhew, 46, to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the Oct. 23, 2020, murder of Bonnie Lanier Rushing, plus 50 years consecutive prison time and five years probation for other crimes.

But first, Rushing’s family and friends told Mayhew what they and the community lost and what they think of him for what he did. Six individuals gave their victim impact statements as spoken testimony, and Assistant District Attorney Casey Blount read the statements of three others.

First to speak was Rushing’s sister, Patricia Lanier Jones, who sobbed at times as she sat in the witness chair. But she faced Mayhew, who was seated at the defense table in a jail uniform and shackles, and told him he had turned Oct. 23, 2020 into “a nightmare that will never go away.”

By “your actions that day, you took a sister, my sister,” Jones said. “We had lost Mother 18 months earlier to cancer and were doing all we could do to accept and adjust to it. We were a close family.  We had our differences, but the one thing that we did was support each other, and were there for each other.”

Mayhew also took a wife of 27 years from her sister’s husband, Mike Rushing, just as their sons, Chad and Travis, were nearly raised, and took a mother “from two sons who loved their mother in their own way,” Jones told him.

As revealed during the Jan. 31-Feb. 2 trial, Mayhew’s own mother has died since he has been in jail. Jones told him she could have slapped him when, during his testimony at the trial, he had “teared up talking about not being there with your mother,” with no apparent regard for what he took from her nephews.

“You took their mother’s life as they were 18 and 23.  The youngest was … a senior in high school. …,” she said. “And I see the hurt in those boys … because of you.”

He also took a friend to many, the victim’s sister said, noting that about 500 people attended her visitation.

Noting that Mayhew had claimed that, after Rushing was shot, he had set her up against a porch rail to help her breathe, Jones said, “You’re the only one that  believes  that. My sister died alone while you ransacked her house and stole from her.”

And she indicated that prosecutors’ pursuit of a sentence of life without parole was not the family’s first choice.

“When you talk about your rights, you need to remember Bonnie Lanier Rushing. You took her life and her rights,” Jones said. “We asked for the death penalty.  However, the district attorney chose differently. … So you need to thank her for not seeking the death penalty.”

Pastor’s statement

“Bonnie loved her family tremendously, but her love didn’t stop there,” testified Pastor William “Chip” Strickland Jr. of Brooklet United Methodist Church.

Strickland arrived at the Rushings’ home shortly after her body was found and has been ministering to grieving family members and others affected for two and a half years.

Bonnie Rushing continually encouraged Strickland and his wife and other church members and “embodied a Christlike love that she extended to us constantly,” her pastor  said.  He noted her service in the church through  Bible studies, her Sunday school class, the youth program and other activities, and in the community with Boy Scouts,  the  volunteer Fire Department and the Southeast Bulloch High School  FFA.

“This man’s actions inflicted pain on the hearts of many people,” Strickland said. “He caused a community to lose its peaceful innocence. He hurt us, and hurt us deeply. While I pray that we may grow to forgive this man, I also pray that he will never see the light of daylight outside of the walls of the prison. … I pray that he might find remorse in his heart.”

October 2020 spree

As Mayhew acknowledged in testimony during his trial, he was a convicted felon fleeing after missing a court date on a federal firearms charge in Tennessee when he ripped the GPS unit out of his car and drove through Georgia in October 2020. He found his way to a rural area of eastern Bulloch County where he hid out and committed a series of thefts Oct. 22 to 23, concluding with the theft of Rushing’s GMC Acadia as she lay on her front porch dying of a gunshot wound to the head.

He admitted to stealing a Ruger SP101 .357 revolver, a two-shot derringer-type pistol and a Remington rifle from another home in the area. A ballistics expert linked a bullet jacket found in a shutter behind the porch of Rushing’s home to the Ruger revolver, which was still in the Acadia when Mayhew was arrested  driving it in Florida later that same day.

He admitted to confronting Rushing while armed with the stolen handguns, seeing she had a pistol, hearing a shot and seeing her fall, but then denied shooting her.

Twelve local jurors found Mayhew guilty of all charges from a 13-count indictment Feb. 2 at the conclusion of the three-day trial. Since Ogeechee Judicial Circuit D.A. Daphne Totten did not seek to make it a death penalty case in advance, the only sentencing options for a murder under Georgia law were a life sentence with or without the  possibility  of parole.

After the trial concluded, Assistant District Attorney Casey Blount, who led in presenting the prosecution’s case, said Mayhew’s status as a recidivist, or repeat offender with three prior felony convictions, left no alternative to life without parole.

So Blount’s first action at Tuesday’s hearing was to introduce a certified record of Mayhew’s three separate convictions for aggravated burglary and  two other felony-level thefts in Tennessee. Ogeechee Circuit Chief Public Defender Renata Newbill-Jallow did not contest this but asked only that, in sentencing Mayhew for the crimes, the judge make sentences run concurrent where legally possible.

But Blount asked that all the sentences be made to run  consecutive,  for life without parole plus 55 years.

Mayhew testified again during the sentencing hearing.  He again denied killing Rushing but said he was sorry she died.

Judge’s view

“This coming June I will have been a lawyer for 40 years. In those 40 years I’m certain that I’ve never encountered anyone more callous, more calculating, more coldblooded – and more evil – than the defendant in this case,” Bennett said before pronouncing sentence.

Life without parole was the sentence for malice murder, with the two counts of felony murder and the one aggravated assault count merged into it.

To this was added five years for possession of a firearm in committing a felony, 20 for burglary of the Rushings’ home, with the vehicle theft merged into it, 10 for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and 15 years to serve plus five on probation for burglary at the home of William Joseph Sanford and family. Theft counts for individual items taken were also merged.