DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — A man has been convicted and will spend the rest of his life in prison for strangling his pregnant girlfriend to death in DeKalb County, the district attorney announced this week.
Aldeyshaun Locklear, 20, was found guilty last week on several charges including felony murder and aggravated assault by st rangulation.
He was arrested and charged in 2019, after 19-year-old Te'a Choates was found buried in her grandmother's backyard days after she'd gone missing.
In 2019, family described her as a "present from God."
According to DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston, at trial jurors learned that Locklear and Choates lived with Choates' grandmother in Lithonia when Choates went missing in August 2019.
Locklear claimed not to know anything about his girlfriend being missing, though police had gotten an anonymous tip that he was responsible for her death.
The District Attorney's Office did not provide any other details about the anonymous tip.
Under questioning, Locklear "changed his story and said that the two got into an argument and the victim pulled a knife on him" and that "he then shoved her, causing her to hit her head on the bathtub."
He claimed he tried to wake her up and perform CPR, then led investigators to where he had buried her in a shallow grave under sticks and debris.
Later he confessed to strangling her, and an investigation uncovered that he had been physically abusive for "months leading up to her death."