A Bulloch County Superior Court jury deliberated about two hours Wednesday before returning a guilty verdict on all charges against Rolando “Chico” Millan for the July 4, 2021, murders of Brittany Sneed Mack, Travis Sneed and Kristina Soles in Lundy’s Trailer Park on the outskirts of Statesboro.

The verdict was delivered shortly after 3 p.m. and after polling the jurors to make sure they all agreed, Judge F. Gates Peed sent them home. Then in a very brief sentencing phase, Mack and Sneed’s mother, Helen Sneed, who was also a key witness during the trial, made an impassioned, tearful statement to the court and to Millan.

“I prayed and I prayed, and I prayed for you, just like you was my own child … and I never wanted this day to come, I never wanted to hear the verdict ‘guilty’ …,” Sneed told Millan. “What you did, I hope that whenever you grow up, in your manhood as well as now, think about what you’ve done, but I don’t have hate in my heart for you, my child, but you’ve got to learn. … The crime you committed, it was wrong. You took innocent people’s lives.”

She said she forgives him but believes that justice was done in the verdict. She thanked the prosecutors and law enforcement officers for their work on the case. Sneed is also grandmother to two of the three children who were the only apparent eyewitnesses to the shootings, but who were not called to testify.

Life without parole

After hearing recommendations from the lead prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Jillian Gibson, and Millan’s defense attorney, Nicole Fegan, Peed told Millan, who is 18 now and was 16 when the murders were committed, that he is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Officially, the conviction on the count of possessing a firearm in committing a felony adds five consecutive years.

July 2021 tragedy

The mobile home at Lot 9 where the shootings occurred on Sunday, July 4, 2021 was the home of Brittany Sneed Mack, 35, who lived there with her 3-year-old son. Mack’s brother, Travis Sneed, 37, was staying there with her at time, and had his 5-year-old daughter with him that weekend. Sneed’s girlfriend, Kristina Soles, 37, was there that day with her 7-year-old daughter.

A neighbor to whom the children came crying called 911 about 7:10 p.m., some minutes after hearing what he thought might be gunshots rather that July Fourth fireworks. When a Bulloch County Sheriff’s Office deputy arrived, he found Mack, bleeding from gunshot wounds, flat on the ground of the residence. She died on the way to the hospital.

More deputies arrived and at first thought the shooter was still inside. About half an hour after the first arrival, officers from the BCSO and Statesboro Police Department’s Special Response Team entered the trailer with assault rifles and bullet-resistant shields.

They found Travis Sneed dead in the blood-spattered hallway, near the bedroom where Soles lay lifeless on a blood-soaked pillow.

Dr. Joni Skipper, the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsies, reported that Mack had five, Sneed six and Soles three gunshot wounds, about which Skipper testified in detail Monday.

Another of the first-day witnesses was a Georgia Bureau of Investigation firearms specialist. Examination under a microscope indicated that the eight shell casings were ejected from the same gun, consistent with the characteristics of a Glock 9mm pistol. But the bullets and bullet fragments collected were too damaged to tell if they were all from the same gun, she testified.

Investigators never recovered the pistol used in the crime. Nor did they recover several guns or a stash of illegal drugs that a woman whom Gibson described as another girlfriend of Sneed’s testified were in the home the day before the shooting.

But Johnny Roy Hagins, a neighbor of Sneed’s, testified that he heard Sneed and Millan have a heated argument. When he asked, Sneed told him he owed Millan money, and Hagins said he told him he should repay him.

Also on Tuesday, Alberto Cordero, who lived near Millan when he was staying at his grandmother’s home on Simons Road, testified that he gave Millan a ride that night to a road in another area of town, which turned out to be near his aunt’s home.

Cordero also testified that he buried a bookbag Millan brought him containing guns in Cordero’s yard. But when an investigator went there with him, they dug a hole several feet deep and found no bag of guns, the investigator testified.

Blood on a shoe

One key piece of evidence an investigator did find, in a July 21, 2021 search of Millan’s grandmother’s home, was a white Nike tennis shoe in the room where he had been staying. This was matched up with another white Nike shoe he had purportedly worn, and both were tested at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab.

The only witness to testify Wednesday, GBI forensic biologist Jessica Romanoski, testified that a stain from the right shoe was human blood matched by DNA to a sample of Travis Sneed’s blood from the medical examiner’s office.

A speck of blood from the bottom of the left shoe had insufficient DNA to match, she said.

The jury also saw a photo Millan had taken of himself, holding two pistols, one of them a Glock 9mm, while crouching so that his white Nikes were also visible.

Helen Sneed had been the first witness in the trial, on Monday.

She testified that she visited her daughter’s mobile home in the late afternoon of July 4, 2021 and left about 6:20 p.m. after someone had knocked on the door and she was the one who got up to answer.

But instead of someone standing at the door, Mrs. Sneed had found a young man sitting on a chair on the porch. She had told investigators he had “curly hair,” was “handsome” and looked to be “Puerto Rican.” She had also said he was wearing white shoes.

Peed informed Millan of his right to appeal, and Fegan said she will file the initial motion for a new trial.