ATLANTA — The charges in a 2022 Atlanta shooting that left a woman who shared a child with Young Thug dead were dismissed back in November, with a judge ruling the woman was the first person to fire shots and that the two people charged shot back and acted in self-defense.
11Alive learned of the case's outcome this week, and it does not appear to have been widely reported. However the news did gain traction on several hip-hop news focused social media accounts.
According to an order from Fulton County Superior Court Judge Kimberly E. Esmond Adams, the two defendants in the case -- Imani Spears and Joshua Fleetwood -- had filed a motion claiming immunity under self-defense provisions and that they were "legally justified" in the shooting of LaKevia Jackson.
Judge Adams ruled in their favor, dismissing all charges and determining that Jackson was shown by surveillance video as "the first person to fire a weapon -- first into the air and then toward the defendants who were running away and retreating to their vehicle."
11Alive has updated previous stories on the case, removing mugshots of Spears and Fleetwood in accordance with station mugshot policy as well as updating headlines to reflect the case's outcome. You can find those stories here, here and here.
You can read the full ruling at the bottom of this story.
Judge Adams found Fleetwood "never showed or physically threatened the decedent (Jackson) with his holstered gun, and did not, in fact, discharge his firearm until after the decedent first discharged two rounds." The judge wrote further, of Spears, that she "did not fire a weapon until decedent had fired multiple rounds as well."
The judge further noted that in the lead-up to the shooting outside of a bowling alley -- where a dispute between the two parties had first occurred over a bowling ball inside the venue, Atlanta police said at the time -- Spears testified she wanted to "see if they could resolve their earlier dispute from inside the bowling center" because she "did not want any trouble."
Adams found that Fleetwood and Spears were driving away from the gunfire initiated by Jackson and that Spears "returned fire at least once and possibly two or three times from the passenger side window while the decedent was still firing off rounds."
The judge also rejected an argument by prosecutors that Fleetwood provoked the shooting by "instigating a confrontation as an excuse to inflict bodily harm on the assailant" as "not supported by the evidence." Instead, the judge wrote, Fleetwood "de-escalated the initial verbal altercation between Defendant Spears and the group of women inside the bowling alley."
Fleetwood and Spears, Adams concluded, "have established by a preponderance of the evidence that each was acting in self-defense and defense of others and is, therefore, entitled to immunity from prosecution."
Full ruling
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