Double life uncovered as former teacher is convicted in gang shooting that killed two children

Mark Winne’s Channel 2 investigative report opens with a detail that feels almost impossible to hold in your head at the same time: Clayton County prosecutors say the man they just helped convict was living as both a fifth-grade teacher and a committed Rolling 20s Crips gang member, and they argue that split identity put him on a path that ended with two children dead.

Winne frames it as a “double life,” but the case itself reads like something far darker than a double shift, because prosecutors are describing a person who, in their telling, could move from the ordinary rhythms of a school day to the chaos of a forced entry without the kind of hesitation most people feel when they’re crossing a moral line.

The former teacher at the center of the case is Michael White, and prosecutors told Winne they relied on video, photos, and witness testimony to prove to a jury that White wasn’t simply adjacent to gang culture, but actively part of it and present during the home invasion that ended with the killings.

Nearly ten years after the shooting on Libby Lane in Jonesboro, a Clayton County jury has now convicted White on 44 counts, including murder and gang charges, and Winne reports that prosecutors see the verdict as both accountability for the past and a warning to others who think time will erase what happened.

The Children Prosecutors Call Innocent Victims

Winne identifies the victims as 11-year-old Tatiyana Coates and her 15-year-old brother, Daveon Coates, and he places the crime on October 22, 2016, in Jonesboro, where prosecutors say the children were killed in gang-related gunfire despite having nothing to do with gangs themselves.

Assistant District Attorney Sheila Francois tells Winne, plainly, that “two innocent lives were lost,” and when he asks whether the children had anything to do with gang activity, she repeats the point so there’s no room for re-framing or softening it: they had nothing to do with it.

That distinction matters because communities often hear “gang violence” and assume there was a private feud between people who signed up for a dangerous life, but in this telling the violence doesn’t stay contained, and the two children become casualties of a conflict they never chose.

Winne’s reporting also highlights the emotional cruelty of the timeline prosecutors described, because the case isn’t simply about the moment shots were fired; it’s about a chain of decisions that led armed adults into a house where children were present, and prosecutors say that chain included planning, travel, and group action.

The “Double Life” Prosecutors Say The Jury Understood

Winne describes White as a fifth-grade teacher at Toney Elementary in DeKalb County who, prosecutors say, was also a “hardcore” Rolling 20s Crips member, and he makes clear that this contrast was not just background color but central to how the state framed White’s role for jurors.

Deputy Chief Assistant District Attorney La’Carrian Blount gives Winne one of the most striking lines in the report when she says White was “kicking in doors at night and killing children and going and teaching children in the morning,” a sentence that’s meant to communicate not only brutality but the ease with which prosecutors believe he switched between worlds.

Even if someone tries to argue that those words are a prosecutor’s rhetoric, it’s hard to deny that they capture the fear many parents feel when they realize how much trust is built into the everyday routines of school, because teachers aren’t just employees to a community, they’re the adults kids spend long hours around when parents aren’t there.

Winne reinforces that sense of whiplash by noting that prosecutors presented White’s alleged gang life as something woven into his identity, not a one-off mistake or a single reckless night, and the jury, at least in this trial, appears to have accepted that framework.

Why Prosecutors Say The Gang Went To That House

Winne reports that prosecutors argued the Libby Lane killings grew out of gang retaliation tied to stolen guns, and the way they describe it makes the tragedy feel even more senseless because the target they were seeking may not even have been there.

Blount tells Winne that the children’s mother had taken in another family “out of the goodness of her heart,” but prosecutors say a teen in that family was a Rolling 20s Crip who had stolen firearms from the gang’s headquarters in DeKalb County, which then brought White and other gang members to the home.

In Winne’s telling, that theft sets off the search, the search turns into an invasion, and the invasion ends with two children shot to death, which is the kind of cascading disaster that makes people feel like the world is being run by the most impulsive and violent personalities in the room.

It’s also the kind of fact pattern that explains why prosecutors emphasize deterrence so heavily in gang cases, because a single decision – like a teen stealing guns – can spiral into a deadly event that consumes people who weren’t involved in the original conflict at all.

The Evidence Winne Says Prosecutors Used To Convict White

Winne says Clayton County prosecutors leaned on video and other evidence to win the conviction, and he reports that he obtained some of that video, including footage prosecutors described as showing White inside a Rolling 20s Crips headquarters in DeKalb County shortly before the murders.

Blount tells Winne she used videos and photos showing White with other gang members to establish membership, and she also points to a gang roster that included White’s handwritten name, evidence prosecutors say helped them prove to jurors that White was not merely accused by rumor but documented within the group.

From there, Winne explains, prosecutors used witness testimony and what they described as resemblance between a sketch of one of the home invaders and White to argue he was inside the house during the invasion, even though the defense disputed that identification and pushed back on whether the state’s evidence truly placed White at the scene.

Francois tells Winne that two co-defendants testified, which is a common pressure point in trials like this because cooperating witnesses can be persuasive and detailed, but they can also be attacked as self-interested, and that tension becomes part of what jurors must weigh when deciding whether testimony is truthful or transactional.

Winne presents the case as a layered effort where prosecutors didn’t rely on one “magic” piece of evidence, but rather built a story out of multiple sources – video, photos, documents, and witnesses – so that if one area was challenged, the overall theory could still stand.

“Someone Else Was The Trigger Man,” But Prosecutors Say The Law Still Covers White

One of the biggest questions in any group shooting case is who actually fired the fatal shots, and Winne doesn’t dodge that uncertainty, reporting that evidence suggested someone else was ultimately the trigger man.

Blount tells him it was “two people,” but she then explains the legal principle prosecutors leaned on, arguing White is still just as guilty under the law as a party to the crime once he crossed the threshold with the group and entered the home with a shotgun.

In Blount’s words to Winne, once White “kicked in that door and ran in that house with a shotgun in his hand,” he became “as guilty as every last other person in that house,” which is the state’s way of saying participation in a violent invasion carries responsibility for what happens when the invasion predictably turns lethal.

That kind of prosecution can feel harsh to some people who want guilt to match the exact physical act of pulling the trigger, but it’s also a response to how group crimes operate in real life, where one person often does the shooting while others provide the intimidation, the forced entry, the control, and the backup that makes the shooting possible.

The Defense Says “Emotion Outran The Evidence”

Winne includes the response of White’s attorney, Bruce Harvey, who argues the prosecution’s case was propelled by the emotional weight of dead children more than the strength of the evidence presented at trial.

Harvey tells Winne that White had successfully embarked on a teaching career after playing college football, and he calls the case “a tragedy in many respects,” but claims “the emotion of the situation outran the evidence the state presented,” a direct challenge to the idea that jurors convicted based on proof rather than outrage.

He also suggests several witnesses testified to help themselves, and he says the defense will continue to fight what he believes is an unjustified conviction by challenging the sufficiency of the evidence, which is often the central battle after a verdict like this because appeals and post-trial motions tend to focus on whether the evidence, even taken in the best light for the state, truly met the legal burden.

Winne doesn’t editorialize the defense position into the ground, but he makes clear the jury still convicted White on all counts, which tells you the jurors either trusted the state’s story, distrusted the defense critique, or found that the totality of evidence was enough to remove reasonable doubt.

The Wider Warning Prosecutors Say The Verdict Sends

Winne speaks with Chris Barry, who he identifies as now a prosecutor in Fulton County but someone who handled the original White indictment in Clayton County, and Barry’s message is less about one defendant and more about the state’s long memory.

Barry tells Winne it may take several years, but if you’re “gang banging in Georgia,” the state of Georgia is going to hold you accountable, which sounds like a slogan until you remember this case itself stretches nearly a decade from crime to conviction and still ended with a jury verdict.

Winne also reports that Clayton County District Attorney Tasha Mosley credited police for the investigation while delivering a much more sobering reflection, saying society is “losing the gang war,” and arguing the real fight doesn’t start in high school or even middle school, but “begins the day that they’re born.”

That line is broad, but it lands because it acknowledges what many communities feel when they keep seeing young people pulled into gang identity early and then locked into cycles of violence that become harder to disrupt as they get older.

The Most Disturbing Part Is How Normal The Cover Story Looks

Winne’s “double life” framing is effective because it captures the specific kind of fear that comes from realizing how ordinary a dangerous person can appear while they’re blending into a job built on trust.

A school community can do everything right – background checks, references, professional oversight – and still not see what’s happening in someone’s private world if that person is committed to hiding it, which makes cases like this feel like a warning about the limits of institutional safety nets.

And when prosecutors describe a teacher moving from classroom to gang headquarters, it forces an uncomfortable question: how many people in positions of trust are carrying hidden allegiances or secret behaviors that only show up when something goes catastrophically wrong?

If anything, Winne’s piece leaves you with a grim lesson: the system can eventually catch up, but families and communities pay the price during the years it takes to do it, and the most vulnerable people – children who have nothing to do with the conflict – are often the ones who suffer the most when violence spills past its intended targets.