A Cobb Superior Court jury has convicted two men from Florida for killing a man and shooting his wife in 2016 in the parking lot of a Windy Hill Road restaurant.
The Cobb District Attorney’s office said Demarious Kevauh Greene, now 23, and Dylan Marquis Ledbetter, now 25, were found guilty of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, armed robbery, and firearms-possession charges. Ledbetter was also found guilty of aggravated assault on a police officer.
Their victims are Anthony and Cynthia Welch, a Kennesaw couple leaving the Pappadeaux restaurant on Oct. 7, 2016, after celebrating her birthday. Prosecutors said they were attacked as they reached their car, and when Anthony Welch stepped in front of his wife to shield her from the men, he was shot in the heart with a .380-caliber bullet.
Cynthia Welch also was shot, in the arm and the chest, and one of the men took a necklace from her neck before they fled the scene by car, according to the DA’s office.
Anthony Welch died a short time later, and Cynthia Welch survived. They were married nearly 25 years.
During the trial, prosecutors said police linked the Welch shootings with a robbery in the parking lot at a store in Woodstock four days later. On Oct. 15, police spotted a vehicle from the Woodstock incident parked at a Red Roof motel near the Pappadeaux restaurant, and followed it as it left the parking lot.
During a traffic stop, prosecutors said the vehicle pulled into a gas station, trying to get away, and hit a Cobb Police officer, then another car. According to police, Greene and Ledbetter jumped out of the car, with Ledbetter being shot three times by a plainclothes officer.
The DA’s office said a man still in the car surrendered to police, who executed a search warrant for items in the vehicle and discovered a .380 handgun that GBI ballistics experts later matched to the bullets in the Welch shootings.
Prosecutors said other evidence corrobrated the presence of Greene and Ledbetter at the crime scenes.
In his closing arguments, Cobb assistant district attorney Jesse Evans said, “this murder was cold-blooded. Senseless. It didn’t have to happen. Cynthia and Anthony Welch did not deserve this.”
Greene and Ledbetter will be sentenced on May 30, and could be facing life in prison without parole. They’ve been convicted in the Woodstock robbery and received life sentences.
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