Ex-Wheeler Student Guilty of Murder

A Cobb County jury has found an ex-Wheeler High School student guilty in the November 2010 shooting death of a taxi driver at an East Cobb apartment complex, according to WSB-TV.

Today's guilty verdict came nearly 2½ years after Ricardo Francois was found slumped over the wheel of his cab van on the morning of Nov. 21, 2010, in a parking lot of the Lincoln Hills apartments. He had just been hired several days earlier as a driver for Rayo Taxi.

Cobb police Detective John Dawes said in court that police had few leads on the murder since there were no witnesses. Investigators got their break in the case after Javin Rashad Andrews, the former Wheeler student, was arrested last year in connection with alleged thefts at the East Cobb school. Authorities came across text messages sent by Andrews' girlfriend to friends about the arrest.

One of the text messages, Dawes said, included information about the shooting death of Francois, according to WSB-TV. 

“The text message said that Rashad, who we identified as Javin Rashad Andrews, had killed the taxi driver in the back of Lincoln Hills and that it had been done with a gun,” Dawes said.

A student receiving that message went to school administrators, he said. Andrews was 15 at the time of the murder.

Judge Rob Leonard sentenced Javin Rashad Andrews to the mandatory sentence of life plus five years, according to WSB-TV.

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