Jayce Sandria Pirtle was 19 when she was shot dead on January 2, 2023, in Stone Mountain, Georgia, a day before her twentieth birthday. She and her 16-year-old sister were walking home along Arbor Ridge Drive when a man dressed in black confronted and chased them. Security camera audio from a nearby home captured Jayce pleading Malachi, stop, please… please, Malachi, no!, followed by gunshots. DeKalb County Police found Jayce deceased from a gunshot wound to the head; her younger sister was seriously injured but survived.

Investigators identified 21-year-old Malachi Coleman of Stone Mountain as a person of interest, and the case appears to stem from an argument the day before in which Coleman was reportedly upset that his girlfriend had spent New Year’s Eve with the sisters and some of their male relatives. The surviving sister’s testimony and the security camera footage were cited as important evidence. Coleman was arrested on February 4, 2023, and charged with malice murder and aggravated assault with a weapon.

Jayce was a Wooddale High School graduate from Memphis, Tennessee, and a devoted mother to her young son, Tah’Jae Pirtle. Does anyone who knew Jayce or was in the Stone Mountain area that night have information that could help clarify what happened?