A jury has convicted Demetrius Donald Coleman of special-circumstance, first-degree murder for gunning down Johnny Mack Renfro on a Rio Dell street in August 2019.

Coleman.

Jurors reached their decision this afternoon after nearly three days of deliberation, in the end finding the 40-year-old Coleman guilty of all charges. Because he was convicted of the special circumstance of firing from a vehicle, he faces life in prison without possibility of parole. Sentencing is set for Jan.7.

Coleman shook his head slightly when the court clerk read the verdicts, then looked down at the table in front of him. He did not stand when jurors left the courtroom.

Before he went to trial, Coleman rejected Deputy District Attorney Carolyn Schaffer’s offer to plead guilty to first-degree murder and be sentenced to life in prison with a possibility of parole. Coleman already has two strikes under the state’s Three Strikes You’re Out law, and he was warned more than once about the consequences if he was convicted at trial.

He decided to take the risk. Testifying in his own defense, Coleman told a story the jury apparently didn’t buy: He claimed a Jamaican man named Dread was driving his green Honda coupe and shot Renfro as Coleman cowered behind the driver’s seat. As Schaffer pointed out during her closing argument, it was very unlikely a man as large as Coleman would have fit in that small space.

The prosecution’s theory was that Coleman believed Renfro was one of the people who had robbed him of marijuana, and when he saw Renfro driving his blue Jeep past the Bayshore Mall he followed him in the green Honda. In another car behind Coleman was his girlfriend, Alma Ahumada-Mendoza, and a woman named Mariah Acosta.

Acosta testified during the trial that during the drive south on Highway 101, Coleman was on the phone with Ahumada-Mendoza giving her instructions: “Stay back. You know what to do.”

Once they reached Rio Dell, Acosta said, Ahumada-Mendoza stopped her car and got something from under the hood. She tucked the item under her shirt and walked away. Seconds after she returned, Acosta testified, she heard the popping of gunfire.

A video surveillance camera showed the 26-yearold Renfro standing behind his Jeep in front of 70 Monument Road. He was changing his clothes, reportedly for a date with a woman in the neighborhood. The green Honda passes by once, then returns. During the second drive-by, the Honda driver begins firing. Renfro is hit and falls and the driver keeps shooting, blowing out the back window of the Honda.

Shortly afterward Coleman showed up at the home of an Alton couple he knew. His car’s back window was shattered, and he told the couple he had been robbed and shot at and wanted to leave the car with them.

Ahumada-Mendoza then arrived and Coleman left with her.

At a preliminary hearing, Judge Timothy Canning dismissed charges that Ahumada-Mendoza, 23, was an accessory after the fact. She was released from custody. Both she and Coleman were arrested in North Dakota a few months after Renfro was killed.

Defense attorney Andrea Sullivan, representing Coleman, argued that prosecution witness Acosta was out to get Coleman because they once had a business and sexual relationship.

Acosta, however, said she met Coleman for the first time on the day of the shooting and didn’t even know his name. A text message to her daughter confirmed that, as Acosta asked for the name of “Alma’s man.”

Judge Kelly Neel presided over the trial.

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