Three men were found guilty in a violent 2023 crime spree in which a Tallahassee police officer was shot and nearly killed and another individual was shot and injured while asleep.
Jurors deliberated more than four hours on Friday, May 1, before returning guilty verdicts in the trial of John’Darious Wright, 28, the shooter, Rahyim Sanders, 28, a participant, and Tyrell Guinnie, 29, the getaway driver.
Wright, Sanders and Guinnie were led out of the courtroom in handcuffs and taken to the Leon County Detention Facility. Leon Circuit Judge Jonathan Sjostrom set a case management conference for June 1 and said a special sentencing date would be set later.
The men were accused in connection with a pair of home invasions that occurred in the early morning hours of Sept. 25, 2023, in two different locations 10 miles apart.
At the first on Cypress Point Road, one man was shot in the face while he slept in bed but survived while his father was shot at but didn’t get hit. At the second location on Sandpiper Street, more gunshots were fired inside a townhouse occupied by two people.
Caleb Babb, then a rookie officer with the Tallahassee Police Department, responded to the second shooting incident and was shot by Wright as he was chasing Sanders. Babb, who was shot in his right hip, nearly bled out at the scene from a severed femoral artery.
However, he went on to make a full recovery and took the stand on Tuesday, April 28, the first day of the trial, to testify for the state. On Friday, he watched closing arguments and the reading of the verdict in Leon County Courtroom 2F.
Assistant State Attorney Georgia Cappleman told jurors during closing arguments that Wright had an “itchy trigger finger,” shooting up both locations as he hoped to make off with “cheese,” street code for cash.
“The evidence has shown that the conduct of these men was so dangerous,” Cappleman said. “The evidence is there, and they must be held accountable for their roles.”
Cappleman said the three men met up at a Baymont Hotel and left in Wright’s white Toyota Corolla on a mission to get “cheese,” which was the motive for the crime.
She said Wright left a tennis shoe print at the first scene that was a match for a size 12 Jordan that he accidentally slipped out of and left behind at the second location. A crime lab analyst for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement testified that the shoe was 700 billion times more likely than not that DNA found on the shoe belonged to him.
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Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or 850-599-2180.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Three men found guilty in 2023 shooting of Tallahassee police officer
Reporting by Jeff Burlew, Tallahassee Democrat / Tallahassee Democrat
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