By Joe Johnson
An Oconee County grand jury has indicted a former UGA football player for the murder last year of a RaceTrac clerk in Watkinsville.
Ahkil Nasir Crumpton, of Philadelphia, Pa., was charged with felony murder, aggravated assault, criminal attempt to commit armed robbery and two counts of possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony, according to the indictment that was filed Tuesday in Oconee County Superior Court.
Crumpton, who is in custody in Philadelphia, is accused in the indictment of fatally shooting 23-year-old Elijah Wood on March 19, 2021, while the victim was working as the night clerk at RaceTrac on Hwy 441 at Hog Mountain Road.
Oconee County Sheriff James Hale said that Wood was killed during “an armed robbery turned bad.”
The crime had gone unsolved for nearly a year until Feb. 15, when Hale said the U.S, Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives notified him that a shell casing recovered at RaceTrac had been matched to a casing found at the scene of a homicide in Philadelphia, leading investigators to conclude that the same gun was used in both crimes.
OCSO investigators subsequently established a link between Philadelphia and Athens. Crumpton is from Philadelphia, played football for the University of Georgia in 2017 and 2018, and was a student at UGA until 2021.
Crumpton refused to waive extradition to Georgia, and the Western Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office was in the process of obtaining a governor’s warrant to have the suspect extradited.
Hale said an extradition hearing is scheduled for April 13.