Police said the accused was detained the day Kimberly Whaley was shot, then released until detectives built a stronger case.
LOGANVILLE, Ga. — Police arrested a 29-year-old Loganville man Monday and charged him in the fatal shooting of CVS employee Kimberly Whaley, 62, who was shot outside the store where she worked on Nov. 14 and died after being flown to an Atlanta hospital.
The arrest ended a five-month wait in a case that unsettled this small east metro Atlanta city and left police defending why no one had been charged sooner. Loganville police said Evander Derrell Choates now faces felony murder, aggravated assault, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony and pointing a pistol at another person. Chief Dick Lowry said detectives needed months to turn suspicion into a case that prosecutors could take to trial. Even with the arrest, police have not announced a motive, have not described the core evidence in public, and say they do not believe Whaley and Choates knew each other.
The shooting happened just before 4 p.m. on Nov. 14 at the CVS near Highway 78 and Conyers Road, a busy Loganville intersection lined with businesses and steady daytime traffic. Police said Whaley had arrived for work when someone shot her in the head in the parking lot. A helicopter took her to Grady Memorial Hospital in critical condition, but she died two days later. In the first hours after the shooting, officers searched the area, collected evidence and looked for surveillance video. Lawrenceville police later stopped a vehicle linked to the investigation and detained a person of interest, but no charges followed that night. Lowry said Monday that the man now charged in the case was the same person police had been forced to release while the case was still too thin to hold up in court. “When we had to release him that night, none of us were happy about it,” Lowry said as he described the decision that hung over the department for months.
Investigators then built the case piece by piece. Lowry said detectives executed 24 search warrants, interviewed dozens of witnesses, reviewed hundreds of pages of records and relied on scientific testing before making the arrest. Multiple agencies joined the effort, including the Walton County Sheriff’s Office, the Walton County District Attorney’s Office, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Monroe police and the U.S. Secret Service. Police never fully explained the Secret Service role, though Lowry said in December that the agency brought technical tools his department did not have. He also said the CVS had no surveillance cameras, a gap that made a daylight killing in a busy parking lot harder to solve than many residents expected. During that earlier stage of the inquiry, Lowry said he did not believe the shooting was random because “nothing was taken from her.” Months later, however, police still have not said why Whaley was targeted, whether she was followed to work, or what evidence finally pushed the case from suspicion to arrest.
Whaley’s death carried unusual weight in Loganville because she was not an anonymous victim to the people who worked and shopped along Atlanta Highway. CVS said after the shooting that she had worked at the store for seven years and was known for an upbeat, caring manner. Customers told local television stations they saw her often at the pharmacy and remembered her as polite, steady and familiar. Her obituary described a woman who had been married for 18 years and liked quiet time at home, college football and cooking with her spouse. The days after the shooting, nearby business owners turned a restaurant donation jar into a fundraiser for her family, a small-town response to a crime that many people said made little sense. In December, Whaley’s spouse told one station the killing had left him unable to sleep in their bed. That grief stayed in public view Monday when family members attended the police announcement and became visibly emotional as Lowry described the arrest.
The charges filed Monday moved the case into a new, more formal stage. Police said Choates was taken into custody with help from Gwinnett County SWAT and booked into the Walton County jail. Atlanta News First reported that he made a first court appearance Monday and was denied bond. As of Tuesday, authorities had not announced any broader court schedule, and they had not said whether prosecutors would seek additional charges. Lowry said he was highly confident in the file detectives had assembled for the district attorney, but he also made clear that some investigative work continues. That leaves room for more records, more testimony and more disputes over what can be used at trial. The public still does not know what physical evidence ties Choates to the killing, whether prosecutors believe he acted alone in planning the attack, or whether a grand jury will hear the case in the coming weeks. Those questions now shift from police briefings to the courtroom process.
The arrest also sharpened the central mystery that has shadowed the case from the start. Police now have a defendant, but not a publicly stated reason for the shooting. Lowry said there were no “obvious connections” between Whaley and Choates and that investigators do not believe the two knew one another. That statement points away from a simple personal feud, yet police have stopped short of calling the killing random. They have not said whether they are looking at mistaken identity, a targeted attack for reasons still unknown, or some other explanation that has not been disclosed. The chief said his department deliberately released little information over the winter because detectives did not want to damage the prosecution before charges were ready. That approach frustrated some residents, but it also reflected the pressure on a small department trying to solve a high-profile killing in a public place with limited early evidence.
By Monday afternoon, the police station briefing had become part announcement, part release valve. Lowry told reporters he hoped he might finally sleep after the arrest, a remark that captured how long the case had weighed on him. Around Loganville, the crime remained hard to reconcile with the routine place where it happened. This was not an isolated field or a dark back road. It was a pharmacy parking lot in daylight, at a store where Whaley was starting an ordinary shift. For many residents, that plain setting made the killing feel even more unsettling. The arrest answered the most urgent question of who police say pulled the trigger, but it did not erase the months of uncertainty that came before it or the grief that still surrounds a woman many people knew simply as the CVS worker who was always there.
As of Tuesday, Choates was in custody, the investigation remained open and police still had not named a motive in Whaley’s killing. The next public milestone is likely to come with an indictment decision or a newly scheduled court hearing that begins to show how prosecutors plan to present the case.
Author note: Last updated April 14, 2026.