Just after 2 p.m. on January 14, 2021, as two students left Austin-East High School in Knoxville, Tennessee, the occupants of a Honda Pilot opened fire on them as the students drove out of a parking lot near the school. The students drove west, with the Pilot in pursuit, until the chase ended at a gas station at the corner of Cherry Street and Magnolia Avenue. The Knoxville Police Department received the first 911 call at 2:13 p.m. Neither 16-year-old Johnkelian Mathis, the car’s driver, nor Azley Mills were injured in the incident.
Mills told police at the scene that two teenagers, 14-year-old Rashan Jordan and 16-year-old Deondre Davis, had been in the Pilot. She said she knew them only from social media. Two days later, she named a third participant, 16-year-old Ahmad Gatlin, whom she had known for several years.
Gatlin was arrested on January 29, 2021. All three young men were charged with attempted murder, theft, and several weapons charges.
Mathis was shot to death in August 2021. Separately, Jordan and Davis were arrested on March 15, 2021, and charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of a Knoxville teenager on February 12, 2021. They were convicted of first-degree murder in March 2023 and sentenced to life in prison.
Gatlin’s case was transferred out of juvenile court on April 27, 2023. His attorneys then sought to sever his case from Davis and Jordan’s, but Judge Steven Sword of Knox County Criminal Court denied the motion.
The state had seized two cellphones from Gatlin, an iPhone 12 and an iPhone XR. Shannon Morris, a digital forensic analyst with the Knoxville Police Department, used a software program to extract the data from the devices in an effort to establish Gatlin’s activities at the time of the shooting.
Gatlin’s attorneys, Mark Stephens and Melissa DiRado, filed a notice of alibi on August 15, 2023, that said that at the time of the shooting, Gatlin was in West Knoxville, at the apartment of his girlfriend, Anthonnisha Hawkins, which was seven miles and 15 minutes away from the school. Both Gatlin and Hawkins had time-stamped videos and photos in their respective Snapchat accounts.
The attorneys also filed a discovery request for any reports used or created by Morris. Although the defense team examined the cellphones and retained an expert witness on digital forensics, it did not run its own reports.
In addition, Stephens sought to obtain records from Uber to show that Gatlin used the service to travel from Hawkins’s apartment to a house on Woodbine Avenue, leaving after 3 p.m. But Uber did not provide those records in time for the trial, which began on November 15, 2023.
In her testimony, Mills did not identify Gatlin as a shooter, nor did she say who was driving the Pilot. She was asked, “Were you ever able to see who was shooting at you?” Mills responded, “I could, but I couldn’t—like, I can’t remember now, but, yes, I could.” Later, she said, “I just remember three dudes outside of a window—or two outside of a window while they were driving and they [were] just shooting.” She said the three men were “Ahmad and Dre and Shan,” whom she identified in court.
The state also introduced photos and videos of Gatlin, Davis, and Jordan displaying a 5.56 mm weapon. While a forensic expert for the state had testified that shell casings found in the Pilot were consistent with a 5.56 mm weapon, there was no evidence introduced that linked the weapon in the photos and videos to the weapon used in the shooting.
Tanner Rice testified about his Honda Pilot being stolen on January 13, 2021, and noticing upon its return three days later that a user named “GoKrazy” had connected to the entertainment system. GoKrazy was a name associated with one of Gatlin’s iPhone accounts, but the state did not present any evidence about when the phone was connected to the Pilot.
Morris testified about her examination of Gatlin’s cell phones. She testified that a Cellebrite extraction program found an Uber datapoint on Gatlin’s iPhone XR with a time stamp of 3:08 p.m. associated with 2508 Woodbine Avenue, which was two blocks from the Exxon station and less than a mile from the high school. The prosecutor asked Morris if that datapoint indicated the phone’s location at that time.
Morris said it didn’t. She testified: “It just says that at, or before, 3:08:03 p.m., it was in that area enough to locate—to connect to the network long enough to register that date and time. So, when you go in to use your Uber app, it's going to connect you to the closest Uber driver.”
The prosecutor asked: “So this tells you that sometime prior to 3:08 p.m., on January 14th, 2021, Mr. Gatlin’s phone, GoKrazy’s iPhone, was within the area of Woodbine Avenue.”
Yes, said Morris.
During cross examination, Morris was asked whether the phone could have simply been looking at that location.
“Well, it was in that location at some point on or before 3:08,” Morris said.
“Why is that your opinion?”
“Because it hit the GPS at that location. That’s how GPS works, it does a lat and long.”
Later, Morris said that when a user accessed the Uber network to request a ride, the system automatically indicated where the device was located based on geographic coordinates.”
Morris also testified that Gatlin’s iPhone 12 had a “significant location” registered at around 2 p.m. on January 14 in the vicinity of Hawkins’s apartment. Morris did not explain the source of this information or its significance.
During her testimony, Morris briefly mentioned that the state had used a second extraction program called Axiom to gather information on Gatlin’s Snapchat usage. (The Cellebrite extraction had not detected any Snapchat data.) DiRado said the defense had not been given a copy of the Axiom report. Assistant District Attorney General Takisha Fitzgerald said the state’s case was built around the Cellebrite program.
The state also introduced a text message from Gatlin to Davis sent on January 14 at 2:16 p.m. It said, “Be careful. They’re dumping in the P.”
Gatlin did not testify, but Hawkins testified that Gatlin was at her apartment in the Sutherland neighborhood in West Knoxville at the time of the shooting. Stephens introduced Snapchat posts taken at the apartment, with the last posts from both accounts time-stamped at 1:56 p.m.
Gatlin’s attorneys also introduced text messages from Gatlin’s phone the afternoon of the shooting. At 2:50 p.m., a person texted him “Wya”, meaning “Where you at?” Gatlin responded “Suther” and then quickly “Land.” At 3:08, he texted Hawkins and asked her when her mother was coming home. At 3:33 p.m., he texted that he was finally leaving. At 3:57 p.m., a friend named Zaria Evans asked Gatlin where he was, and he texted “woodbine.”
Morris testified as a rebuttal witness that it was possible to alter the time on an iPhone, and that doing so would also change the timestamp on a Snapchat posting.
During closing arguments, Gatlin’s attorneys said that the Snapchat postings and text messages supported Gatlin’s alibi at the time of the shooting. They said that the correct reading of the cellular data was that Gatlin was at the Sutherland address at 3:08 p.m. when he accessed Uber to get a ride to the Woodbine address.
Fitzgerald said in her closing that the Uber datapoint indicated Gatlin’s location. She said, “Remember the connection on the infotainment system of the vehicle with Mr. Gatlin’s phone, the GoKrazy Apple cell phone that connected, and remember that the Uber app was connected when he was on Woodbine, and that also establishes where he was and where they were during the time of this attempted first-degree murder.”
Fitzgerald also provided an answer about why Gatlin was texting Davis just minutes after the first 911 call was made. “And so what’s happened is that they do the shooting,” she said. “They drop off Mr. Gatlin at 2:13, 2:14. They drop off. There’s more shooting at Walter P. Taylor Homes, which is near Woodbine. He sent the text, “Be careful. They’re dumping in the P.” That’s what “dumping in the P” means.” (The Taylor homes are a public-housing community in East Knoxville.)
On November 21, 2023, the jury convicted Gatlin of two counts of attempted first-degree murder, two counts of possession of a firearm during a felony, and theft. The state had dismissed an assault charge prior to the jury being sworn in.
The jury acquitted Jordan on all charges, but hung on Davis, who later pled guilty to reduced charges. (The state had no location data for the cellphones of Davis and Jordan that placed them near the shooting or in the Pilot.)
Prior to sentencing, on January 5, 2024, Gatlin’s attorneys received a response from Uber. The company sent a spreadsheet of the trips that Gatlin—under the name “GoKrazyy Go Krazyy”—took during January 2021. The records showed Gatlin ordering an Uber at 3:09 p.m., getting picked up outside Hawkins’s apartment at 3:39 p.m., and arriving at the Woodbine address at 3:56 p.m.
On February 27, 2025, Gatlin received a sentence of 31 years in prison. During sentencing, Judge Sword said: “In this case, I think the difference is GoKrazy. I mean, Mr. Rice’s entertainment system having GoKrazy connected to the stolen car, I think is why the jury found Mr. Gatlin guilty and not the other two. So, I don’t really have a residual doubt.”
On April 1, 2025, Gatlin’s attorneys asked the court to order the state to issue a subpoena to Snapchat’s owners, claiming that the company was in possession of exculpatory evidence that Gatlin could not obtain. The motion also said that the state had failed to give Gatlin’s defense information on Gatlin’s Snapchat account obtained through the Axiom phone extraction.
The state responded two days later and said the police department had two Axiom reports, one for each of Gatlin’s cellphones. They provided the reports on April 7.
Gatlin’s attorneys were now working with attorneys at the Wrongful Convictions Clinic at the University of Tennessee College of Law.
The cellphones and the Axiom reports were sent to Patrick Eller, a digital forensics analyst in Richmond, Virginia.
In a report dated May 9, 2025, Eller wrote, “Based on the review and analysis performed to date, it’s my opinion both iPhone devices were near the location of 611 Sutherland View Way, Knoxville, TN … on 1/14/2021 from approximately 1:11:49 PM to 3:40:49 PM.
He said his opinion was corroborated by GPS data, WiFi data, and Social Media data. The report said Gatlin’s phone had connected to the Pilot’s entertainment system on January 13, but there was no evidence that either of his devices connected to the vehicle on January 14, 2021. In addition, Eller said the state’s Axiom report showed no alteration in the Snapchat time stamps. The Axiom extraction had been a “full file extraction” rather than the “advanced logical extraction” in the Cellebrite analysis.
Eller’s report was included in a motion for a new trial filed on May 9, 2025, by Martha Dinwoodie, an attorney in practice with Stephens and DiRado. The motion said that Eller’s findings were new evidence of Gatlin’s innocence, that Morris had testified incorrectly about the Uber datapoint, and that the state had failed to disclose the Axiom report, which provided additional evidence to support Gatlin’s alibi.
“[B]y suppressing this data, the State was able to use the incomplete Cellebrite data to make claims that were completely unsupported by the data revealed in the Axiom extraction,” the motion said. “Had it turned this data over, it never would have been able to argue that Mr. Gatlin was at Woodbine at or before 3:08 PM. It would not have been able to argue that the timestamps on Mr. Gatlin’s Snapchat video were false, and Mr. Gatlin would have had location data associated with the Snapchat upload. It could not have argued that Mr. Gatlin’s cell phone put him in the Honda Pilot on January 14, 2021.”
The motion also said that Judge Sword had erred in denying Gatlin’s motion to sever his trial from Davis and Jordan. Gatlin was prejudiced by the pre-trial publicity against his co-defendants, who had been convicted of an unrelated murder, while at the same time barred from introducing evidence of that unrelated crime, the motion said.
The motion also said that Fitzgerald had committed misconduct during her closing argument when she told jurors about the meaning of Gatlin’s text to Davis, because there had been no testimony that explained the text.
In its response, the state denied any disclosure violation. It wrote: “The state provided both the iPhone XR and iPhone 12 to the defendant’s original digital forensics expert, Glen Buckley, prior to trial for a full and complete examination. Thus, what was available to the state was also made available to the defendant prior to trial.”
But the state agreed that Gatlin deserved a new trial, because Eller’s report cast doubt on the state’s theory of the case, which hinged on Gatlin having possession of his iPhone XR at the time of the shooting.
On May 21, 2025, Judge Sword granted the motion for a new trial. Gatlin, now 20 years old, was moved from a state prison to the Knox County Jail.
On June 2, 2025, the state dismissed the charges, and Gatlin was released.
“We know wrongful convictions happen and juries can get it wrong, especially when they don’t have all the necessary evidence,” Stephen Ross Johnson, Gatlin’s attorney through the Wrongful Convictions Clinic, said in a statement. “For over 30 years, DNA evidence has revealed how the innocent can be wrongfully convicted. Digital evidence is today’s DNA. Thankfully, the full location evidence on Ahmad’s phones, not presented to the jury at trial, reveals critical location data supporting his innocence.”
– Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 06-18-2025
