Five Gang Members Convicted In Brutal Atlanta Murder

ATLANTA -- Five gang members have been found guilty in the 2016 brutal murder of a man who had been a police witness in California. The Fulton County DA's office said the men devised a plan to lure Christopher Dean, 33, to one of the men's apartment to torture and murder him in an effort to show other gang members that working as a police witness would not be tolerated.

On October 17, 2016, Christopher Lockett invited Dean to the Atlanta home of Xavier and Orlando Gibson. Dean was under the assumption his visit was to complete a drug transaction between himself and Lockett. When Dean arrived at the Gibson home along Sandy Creek Drive, he encountered Lockett’s associates, Xavier Gibson, Orlando Gibson, Quatez Clark, and Joshua Rooks, who were all members of the same street gang. For over an hour, Dean was brutally beaten with a two-by-four and a crowbar, and sodomized. Dean was then shot twice in the back of the head.

Rooks then drove from the scene to a location along Markone Street in Atlanta to pick up Jasper Green and 25-year-old Lamar Almon. The three returned to the murder scene where Lockett paid Almon and Green to clean up brain matter and blood from murder and to burn the victim’s body and his car. The original plan was to place Dean’s body in the trunk of Lockett’s car and drive the vehicle to a location and burn it. However, Green and Almon decided to leave Lockett’s car, with Dean’s body in the trunk, in the parking lot of the H.E. Holmes MARTA station.

“This murder represents the most horrific death in our county in recent history,” said Fulton DA Paul Howard. "My greatest fear is that we would choose to do nothing and the violence would happen again and again.”

The men will be sentenced on April 19.