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The story around the recent arrest of Jeremiah Andrew Franklin Lloyd, 17, of Murphy, is one of the most bizarre I’ve run across in 39 years of reporting local news. However, the story may just be getting started.
After making provocative posts on social media sympathizing with Colt Gray – the 14-year-old charged with killing four people and injuring nine at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga., on Sept. 4 – the Towns County (Ga.) Sheriff’s Office didn’t wait to see what might happen; officials saw the red flags, took a proactive stance and picked him up before anyone could get hurt. That led to additional charges against Lloyd concerning his involvement with a 14-year-old girl, the combination of the two leading to him being held without bond – and hopefully receiving proper mental health care.
While I researched case paperwork and the Cherokee Scout’s files for information on Lloyd, Sports Editor Cannon Crompton – free from covering games due to Hurricane Helene canceling them all – viewed dozens of Lloyd’s social media posts from the last year, taking detailed notes. It’s a harrowing look at a young man seemingly haunted by his past who didn’t see much of a future for himself.
After his mother was murdered in 2022, it would have been inspiring if Lloyd pursued a career in law enforcement as a result. Instead, he seemed to identify more with his father and stepfather, both who are still imprisoned, as well as accused killers like Gray and Shane Donovan McKinney.
The McKinney case shouldn’t get lost in all the other details, because there’s a vital question that needs to be answered.
While talking in a vehicle outside the former Nate’s Country Store on Andrews Road, McKinney was accused of shooting “best friend” Johnny Mark Lowery and killing him on Sept. 7, 2018. The sound of the six shots nearly caused a panic at the Murphy High School football game taking place a half-mile away.
In the March 2, 2021, edition, the Scout reported that Superior Court Judge William Coward dismissed the felony murder charge against McKinney after doctors determined he would never regain the mental capacity to proceed with a trial. While most people would logically conclude that McKinney would be spending the rest of his life in a mental health institution, he was free on July 29, 2024, to be charged by the McDowell County Sheriff’s Office with felony assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, inflicting serious injury and felony hit and run inflicting serious injury.
So less than three years after a judge gave McKinney a pass due to his mental health, he was apparently cleared by doctors, then sent out and about to hurt someone else. According to the order, if McKinney was released from civil commitment, the District Attorney’s Office should have been notified, and prosecutors could have reinstated the murder charge. Yet, they did no such thing.
Court documents show McKinney had been involuntarily committed on at least three occasions prior to the shooting – November 2012, September 2013 and January 2018 – after doctors diagnosed him with schizo-affective disorder. He also had attempted suicide several times. And even after 15 months of active treatment with a host of antipsychotic medications, a doctor said “delusional thoughts continue to interfere with his reasoning about the evidence against him and his ability to receive a fair trial.”
“Mr. McKinney’s capacity to proceed to trial is considered unrestorable,” Dr. Nancy Laney of the N.C. Department of Health & Human Services wrote in a forensic evaluation report in 2021.
So why was this man set free in 2023?
This is exactly the kind of thing that can destroy people’s faith in the U.S. justice system. A man who brutally ended the life of another person, regardless of his perceived sanity at the time, should not be able to live out the rest of his life as if that tragedy never happened.
The Lowery family – as well as all local residents and taxpayers – deserve much better public service than that.
David Brown is publisher of the Cherokee Scout. You can reach him by phone, 828-837-5122; email, dbrown@cherokeescout.com; or on X @daviddBstroh.