Jurors convicted Kelvin Demond Williams on 13 counts after seeing home video and hearing a 911 call from the couple’s teenage son.
WOODSTOCK, Ga. — A Cherokee County jury convicted Kelvin Demond Williams of murder and attempted murder after prosecutors said he shot his wife to death and fired at her 16-year-old son inside their Woodstock-area home in July 2025.
The verdict closed a case that centered on home security video, a late-night 911 call and testimony about years of control inside the family’s house. On March 26, the jury found Williams guilty on all 13 counts in the indictment, and Superior Court Judge Shannon Wallace sentenced him to life in prison without parole plus 100 years and 12 months. The ruling also left in place protections for the children and other relatives who were pulled into the case after the shooting.
Prosecutors said the violence began at about 10:40 p.m. on July 13, 2025, at a home on Daventry Crossing in the Woodstock area of Cherokee County. A 16-year-old boy hid in his bedroom and called 911, telling a dispatcher that his stepfather had shot at him, then shot his mother, and may have been reloading a revolver. His 4-year-old brother was asleep in another bedroom. Deputies who came to the house found Tenisha Williams, 48, dead on the kitchen floor from a gunshot wound. Kelvin Demond Williams was at the doorway to the open garage, smoking a cigarette, according to prosecutors. Officers gave repeated commands, and he came out and was detained. The teenager and the younger child were removed from the home without physical injuries, and deputies found the gun on the kitchen island near where Williams had been standing.
The trial began March 23 and lasted about three and a half days. Jurors heard from 13 witnesses, including deputies, medical experts and other witnesses, and the state introduced about 150 exhibits. Prosecutors said those exhibits included the 911 call, in-home security camera video, crime scene photos, body camera video, medical reports and recordings of jail phone calls. The home video was a central piece of the state’s case. Prosecutors said it showed Williams firing five shots in all. The first went toward the teenage boy’s head and missed. Two more shots aimed at Tenisha Williams also missed. Another shot was fired at the boy as he ran to his room and missed. The final shot, prosecutors said, came after Williams walked toward his wife as she was cornered in the kitchen and begging him not to shoot. That shot killed her. Afterward, prosecutors said, the audio captured him saying, “You dead?” followed by an expletive.
The pace of the verdict underscored how heavily the prosecution leaned on the video and the physical evidence gathered at the house. The jury deliberated for less than an hour before convicting Williams of malice murder, two counts of felony murder, two counts of family violence aggravated assault, criminal attempt to commit murder, first-degree cruelty to children, two counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, reckless conduct and three counts of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Deputy Chief Assistant District Attorney Rachel Ashe, who prosecuted the case in the Blue Ridge Judicial Circuit’s Domestic Violence Unit, said the evidence was “overwhelming.” The state’s theory was not limited to the moments caught on camera. Prosecutors also told jurors that the shooting fit a longer pattern of abuse and coercion that had shaped the family’s life well before the gunfire on Daventry Crossing.
That broader history came into sharper focus during sentencing. Ashe said evidence showed Williams had spent years isolating his wife and controlling her movements. According to the district attorney’s office, prosecutors said he required Tenisha Williams to wear a Bluetooth device so he could monitor her when she left the home. They also said evidence showed that on the day of the killing, he had her buy and load the firearm that would later be used against her. Family members who addressed the court described a long stretch of abuse, intimidation and control. According to the district attorney’s office, relatives said the control was so severe that Tenisha Williams was not allowed to speak with her adult children and was not allowed to attend her mother’s funeral. Those details gave the jury and the court a picture of the shooting not as a sudden act that stood alone, but as the end point of a longer pattern that prosecutors said had been building for years inside the household.
Early reports from the sheriff’s office after the July 2025 arrest had already pointed investigators toward a domestic dispute inside the home. Local coverage at the time said Williams was arrested at the scene and initially jailed without bond on charges that included murder, two counts of aggravated assault and first-degree cruelty to children. The house sits in the Daventry Village subdivision off Alabama Road, a short drive from downtown Woodstock. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution report at the time described the killing as only the second homicide Cherokee County deputies had investigated that year. By the time the case reached trial in March 2026, prosecutors had added the full indictment that reflected the evidence they said they built from the crime scene, the recording from inside the home and the statements of those who responded that night. The state’s case was investigated by the Cherokee Sheriff’s Office and prosecuted by Ashe with assistance from Deputy Chief Assistant District Attorney Geoffrey Fogus.
Wallace imposed the maximum sentence after hearing four victim impact statements. In addition to life without parole plus 100 years and 12 months, she ordered that Williams have no contact with all of Tenisha Williams’ children, the foster mother caring for the boys and their families. The foster mother, described by prosecutors as a close friend from church, told the court about her love for the children and her commitment to them. Wallace said the damage caused by the defendant was “unfathomable.” District Attorney Susan K. Treadaway said the violence inflicted on Tenisha Williams was “evil and inexcusable,” and thanked jurors for watching and hearing evidence that she said no one should have to experience. No additional court date was announced in the district attorney’s release after the sentence was handed down, leaving the March 26 conviction and sentencing as the latest formal step in the case.
The details that remained after the verdict were the human ones, centered on the children who were in the home and on the people now trying to care for them. The teenage boy’s call for help became the first public record of what happened inside the house. Prosecutors said he called while hiding in his bedroom and trying to stay away from a stepfather he believed might still be reloading. His younger brother slept through the violence in another room until deputies carried him out. In court, the foster mother’s statement added another voice to a record otherwise dominated by video, firearms counts and courtroom procedure. Treadaway said the children will be “forever affected” by the killing, a point that framed the sentence as both punishment and protection. By the close of the hearing, the case file held a plain sequence of events, from the call at 10:40 p.m. to the verdict months later, but it also pointed to the lasting cost for the family members left behind.
Williams remains sentenced to life without parole plus 100 years and 12 months, with a no-contact order covering the surviving children, their foster mother and related family members. As of the district attorney’s March 27 release, no new hearing had been announced.
Author note: Last updated March 29, 2026.