Teacher charged in gang-related killing of 2 children
DECATUR, Ga. — A Georgia elementary school teacher has been charged with murder in the 2016 gang-related slaying of two children with ties to Chattanooga.
Based in part on a police sketch, police believe 26-yearold Michael De’Sean White was at the scene of the killings of 11-year-old Tatiyana Coates and 15-year-old Daveon Coates on Oct. 22, 2016, according to news reports.
White, who was arrested Friday, has been removed from
Toney Elementary School in Decatur. It’s unclear if he has a lawyer.
Clayton County Police Chief Mike Register said at the time of the 2016 shooting that police believed the killers, who entered a Jonesboro, Ga., home and shot the children while they were sleeping, were actually looking for another 15-year-old boy who was not home.
Two families were living in the Jonesboro home at the time of the crime, Register said. The mother of Tatiyana and Daveon was the homeowner and she had invited another family — a woman with five children — to live in the home a couple of months earlier.
The 15-year-old boy, who was the intended target of the home invasion, was part of that second family that moved from Tennessee, Register said. He was not at the Jonesboro home when the slayings happened — because he’d fled to Chattanooga.
The teen had been suspected of being involved in a shootout on North Hawthorne Street a day after the Georgia slayings, according to Chattanooga police.
Clayton County Police Maj. Tina Daniel said at least one other person has been arrested, and the agency is still waiting on ballistics tests on a gun recovered from the Chattanooga shootout.
Funerals for Tatiyana and Daveon were held in Chattanooga in November 2016.