A Fulton County judge sentenced Jeremiah Few to life without parole plus 360 years and Israel Bird to two life-without-parole sentences plus 240 years, according to WSB-TV. The sentences followed convictions arising from a series of gang-related shootings that killed two people and wounded a 20-year-old woman and two children.
Bird was convicted in the killings of Alex Smart and Daren Lamont VanArsdale II. Few was convicted in connection with the shootings that wounded a 5-year-old and a 9-year-old, as well as the shooting of the 20-year-old woman, who survived after being shot in the head, WSB-TV reported. Prosecutors said the defendants were associated with a gang named for a neighborhood intersection.
What the convictions establish—and what remains unresolved
The case involved gunfire at an apartment occupied by 10 people, including six children, according to the station’s account. Prosecutors also alleged that firearms used in the shootings had conversion switches and that gang members discussed shooting children in an Instagram group chat. Those details were presented as prosecution evidence; they are not independent findings about Atlanta’s broader gun-violence pattern.
De’Adrian Blackwell, whom prosecutors connected to the shooting of the 20-year-old woman, received 30 years in prison and 45 years of probation on gang-related and other charges, WSB-TV reported. Blackwell has moved for a new trial, as has Bird, whose lawyer says he maintains his innocence. Two other alleged gang members accepted plea deals, while five defendants remain charged. Attorney David West, retained to represent Few on appeal, said he believes the case presents grounds for an appeal and a new trial.
Atlanta has confronted youth gun violence before
The current case is part of a long-running public-safety concern, but the available historical record does not show that it represents a citywide trend. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention says Atlanta’s Project PACT, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1994, identified juvenile gun violence as the consortium’s top priority: OJJDP background.
More recent citywide data also require caution. An Atlanta Regional Commission analysis of Atlanta Police Department data said violent crime declined from 2009 through 2018, rebounded before the pandemic, and reached a historic low in 2023: ARC analysis. That measure covers violent crime overall—not specifically shootings involving children, juvenile offenders, or Fulton County cases—so it cannot be used to measure whether incidents like the Few and Bird case are becoming more or less common.
A separate historical comparison
Atlanta’s history also includes the child-murder series that began in 1979. The FBI describes approximately 29 murders over 22 months in that case: FBI history. That was a distinct series of killings, not evidence of a shared cause, motive, or legal pattern with the gang-related shootings in the current case.
The immediate legal outcome is therefore clear: Few and Bird received life-without-parole sentences with additional prison terms after convictions tied to multiple shootings. The broader significance remains narrower. Available sources document Atlanta’s recurring concern about youth gun violence and provide a citywide violent-crime measure, but they do not establish a direct statistical comparison between this case and either recent Atlanta trends or earlier historical episodes.
