Dupas gets life sentence for his role in 2021 Wilson Apartments gang murder that left South Carolina man dead

COLUMBUS, Ga. (WRBL) — A man convicted back in February of a Columbus gang murder was sentenced late Thursday afternoon in Muscogee County Superior Court.

Davion Dupas was sentenced on murder and gang convictions.

Two other members of the Insane Crips criminal street gang — Corey Troupe Jr. and Jeheim Davis — were also sentenced on gang charges and criminal damage convictions.

It stemmed from the 2021 shooting death of Marcel Samedi at Wilson Apartments.

It was a gang feud gone bad and Dupas ended up killing a member of his own criminal street gang.

Judge Richard T. Winegarden sentenced Dupas to life in prison with the possibility of parole for murder and tacked 17 years, 12 to serve for criminal damage and gang charges.

Davis was sentenced to 18 years, 12 to serve. Troupe, who came to Columbus from South Carolina with Samedi, was sentenced to 10 years, five to serve.

Troupe and Davis were acquitted by the jury on murder charges.

Samedi died on June 5 ^th , 2021 at Wilson Apartments, a public housing complex off Veterans Parkway near River Road.

The case took three weeks to try and was prosecuted by the Georgia Attorney General’s Office gang prosecution unit out of Atlanta.

The lead prosecutor was Thomas Kegley and he argued for maximum sentences. Shawn Hoover is a public defender out of Atlanta who represented Davis.

The two attorneys had very different reactions to the outcome.

“It’s a victory,” Kegley said. “Obviously, you know our gang prosecution unit and the attorney general’s office.  We’re going into two communities and  working to make sure that the citizens are safe in their homes and where they live. So this verdict from the jury and the sentence from the judge, it expresses the community’s desire to to be safe in those circumstances.”

Hoover does not agree with the way the state is using the gang laws.

‘Essentially, what they’re doing is they created a task force with the their office, and it’s a unit to where they take murders,” he said. “And if they assume that any person is part of a gang, they throw gang charges on there, which in my opinion, they overcharge everybody.  It’s like a net that they throw out there.”

He points to this case.

“It was a 52-count indictment,” he said. “The majority of the counts on this indictment had to do with gang and had nothing to do with the murder and nothing to do with the actual shooting, anything to do with the actual victim in this case. They overcharge gang because that’s what they’re essentially shoving down the people’s throats right now.”

This is case is not over.

The state still has charges pending against admitted Insane Crips member Elysia Cooley. She was arrested on murder and gang charges. She was scheduled to stand trial with the others, but did not when she agreed to testify for the state.

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