Background: Crime scene where body of Brandon Smith, 17, was found (via YouTube screenshot/WXIA). Inset: A’darius Jashawn Williams booking photo (via Meriwether County Jail).
Nearly a month after a promising high school football player went missing and was then found shot to death behind a house in Georgia a day before his big championship game, police said this week they have finally arrested a suspect and charged him with murder.
A’darius Jashawn Williams, 19, was booked for murder by police in Manchester, a town around 75 miles south of Atlanta, on Jan. 2, according to a statement Wednesday from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Police accuse Williams of shooting Brandon Smith, 17, a student and defensive lineman for Manchester High School, sometime around Dec. 7, two days before Smith was first reported missing by his family.
The GBI was tasked with looking into Smith’s disappearance last month and now allege that evidence led them to conclude Williams got into an argument with Smith prior to the shooting. No specific details of the dispute were available since an investigation is still pending. It is also unclear if there was a prior connection between the teenagers.
The high school student was last seen on Dec. 7 and reported missing by his grandmother Maxcine Atkinson — identified in media reports as Maxine Smith — on Dec. 9 after she had tried contacting him repeatedly without success. The next day, the boy’s football coach contacted her to let her know that her grandson’s body had been found behind someone’s house, Atlanta outlet WXIA reported.
Smith’s high school notified the shaken student community the same day in a public letter just ahead of a highly anticipated championship game.
Investigators said they immediately believed foul play was involved. Smith’s grandmother, who raised the 17-year-old since he was an infant, told the New York Post she believed her grandson “wanted to tell her something he couldn’t” the night before he went missing and was eventually killed.
Brandon Smith’s grandmother Maxine Smith to reporters in Georgia after her grandson went missing and was then reported murdered in December 2023 (via YouTube screengrab/WXIA).
The victim’s grandmother told the newspaper that that although her grandson would go to bed early most nights, she realized that the last night he was alive in her home he had snuck out of his room at some point overnight. She told police she realized he had done this when she went to rouse him the next morning.
Her grandson deeply cared for his family and was “good to people” including kids in the neighborhood who liked to play basketball or football with him in his free time, the boy’s grandmother said. She also told the Post in December that her grandson “didn’t do nothing wrong” and that the world should know he was a “good boy.”
The victim’s team, the Manchester Blue Devils, lost the game by one point, the New York Post reported.
As for Williams, police say he is now booked into the Meriwether County Jail and being held without bond. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has asked that anyone with information or tips to call 706-565-7888. To submit an anonymous tip, call 1-800-597-8477 or submit one online.
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