According to testimony in court Tuesday, six or more hours passed after Christopher Joyce and Jamaryce Mincey were shot to death in a room at the Days Inn in Statesboro – after three other young men who had been in the room left and while some women who were close to them found out – before anybody called the motel office, let alone the police.

Tuesday was the second day of the trial of Kentaevious Raeshon Davis, now 22, of Glennville, on murder and other charges in connection with the Feb. 29, 2024, killing of Mincey, 23, of Green Street in Statesboro, and Joyce, 20, formerly of McDonough. Except for one or two men, such as an FBI expert who testified about areas from which cellphone calls were made and received, it might have been women’s testimony day. Witnesses included the woman who rented the motel room, one who had a relationship with one of the victims, and two who had relationships with Davis.

Testimony by witnesses called by “the state,” in other words Chief Assistant District Attorney Jillian Gibson and her team from the Ogeechee Judicial Circuit DA’s Office, continued throughout the day. But on Davis’ behalf, Assistant Public Defenders Que’Andra Campbell and Daveniya Fisher commanded nearly  as much time before the jury with their cross-examination of prosecution witnesses and reviews of state-introduced evidence.

The first witness of the day was Tieyon Tigner, the Glennville woman who had booked the room where the killings occurred. In the process of an intended move from Glennville  to Statesboro, Tigner had been staying  at the motel that week with her five children, the oldest being Damari Tigner, her son who is 18 now but was 16 at the time, and with Devin Johnson, who is the father of her youngest.

Also with them that week was Devin’s sister Demetria, known as “Tiny,” and before the week was out they had been joined or visited by Davis, known as “Spook,” Mincey, called “J-Mo,” who was Demetria Johnson’s boyfriend, and Joyce, nicknamed “Tootie.” At least some of  the  group were staying in a different  room at the motel, where the room doors open to the outside  and the room where the tragedy occurred is on the ground floor, near the back.

Late on the morning of Feb. 29, according to Tieyon Tigner’s testimony, she left in her car, stopping first at Circle K in Statesboro, to take her daughters to school in Glennville and prepare her house for her move.

Gibson asked Tigner when she became aware that something had happened back the motel.

“As soon as a I walked in the house, I got a phone call,” Tigner said, apparently referring to her house at Glennville, which is nearly an hour’s drive from Statesboro. “And when I got the phone call, it was like, ‘Go get Demari and them,’ and I was like, What? Because I thought it was a joke.”

She said she got in her car and met Devin Johnson, Demari and Davis at a Subway restaurant in Statesboro and Demetrius drove from there. The young men were, “like weird, not talking; Devin was crying,” she said.

Gun on his side

Tigner said that “yes,” Davis had a gun “on his side” when he got in the car. When Gibson asked if she had noticed it earlier in the day and if he usually had the gun on him, Tigner said, “Yes, ma’am, all the time.”

From the Subway, the group traveled “straight to Vidalia” and left Davis at the home of a cousin of the Johnsons, Tigner said. Devin, she said, told her that “Spook had just shot J-Mo and Tootie.”

Gibson asked if anybody at this point called had called the police or 911. “Not at that moment,” said Tigner. “Everybody was scared, that’s why nobody didn’t call.”

Then Tigner and family had returned to her place in Glennville, an after dropping Devin and Demari off, she and Demetria left “straight for the hotel” in Statesboro, Tigner said.

But as already established in the trial, it was after 8 p.m. that a clerk at the motel got a call from a member of the extended family group – Demetria, according to Tigner – to check on the  room. After opening the door and peeking inside, the clerk, who had testified Monday, called 911. The first arriving police officer, who also testified the first day, threw a trash can through the window to gain access to the room, where Joyce, having been shot more than 10 times in the upper body, lay dead on the bed nearest the window, and Mincey, having been shot once through the head, lay in a puddle of blood near  the sink and bathroom area at the back of the room.

Emergency medical personnel, arriving on the scene, found the bodies already stiffening and left them for police to continue the investigation.

Tigner had gone to jail that night, charged by Statesboro police with misdemeanor obstruction. “Is that a result of you not being forthcoming initially?” asked Gibson. “Yes, ma’am,” said Tigner.

The public defenders, in cross-examination for Tigner and other witnesses from the group, pointed out how much time had passed before they let anyone know about the shootings.

Tigner said she has “thought it was a joke” when her son called her, and agreed that was at about 2 p.m., when Fisher asked. The witness also agreed that they hadn’t called anybody until Demetria Johnson called the hotel around 8 p.m.

“Why didn’t somebody call? That was six hours,” Fisher said. “Why didn’t somebody call 911 or do something?”

“Scared,” said Tigner.

When Demetria Johnson, who had been in a relationship with Mincey, testified, the defense attorneys noted that she had told police in one interview “that relationship was hell.” She said she did not recall saying this and answered, “I do not recall” to several other questions in cross-examination.

Fisher also pointed to witness statements to police that Mincey had pulled a gun on Devin Johnson that day or earlier that week. Jurors heard an audio recording of one witness talking to police in relation to this, and saw motel security camera video of the five men entering the room – two later than the first three – and one appearing very briefly to brandish a weapon at  the door.

Key women testify

Two other women who testified Tuesday had had relationships with Davis, the defendant.

Lanaya Reed, now a soft-spoken 20-year-old whom the judge kept urging to speak louder so the jury could hear, was the girlfriend living at her grandparents’ house in Tattnall County near Reidsville when Davis reportedly showed up there two or three days after the shooting.

She testified that Davis “was acting like kind of weird … scared,” but didn’t say anything to her about what had happened in the motel room. Reed also said she didn’t lock her car at her grandparents’ home in a quiet rural area. Police detectives reported finding a Glock 9mm semiautomatic pistol, allegedly Davis’, in a bookbag in Reed’s car. A GBI firearms specialist testified Tuesday that the pistol was test fired and matched to all 13 empty cartridge casings found in the motel room.

Kaneisha McKever, who has a child fathered by Davis, testified that she had received a phone call on Feb. 29, 2024, to pick him up in Vidalia, which she did, and drove him to the Dollar General in Glennville.

Over objections from the defense, which Turner mostly overruled, Gibson asked questions about things Davis told McKever later and introduced into evidence texts between them.

One text from his number to hers on March 4, 2004 began, “wats da point in stressin self defense if Dey sayin it don’t look like self defense ….” Another was, “I’m jus finna run cse y’all sound weird n lonk wtf to believe after I told em all Dey hadda do is say Dey ain’t kno me and dat it was bra nem friend dat killed em.”