CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – With Day 2 of the jury trial for a man charged with the murder and armed robbery of a King Mao employee coming to a close, the jury heard testimony from the mother of the victim, the restaurant owners and the defendant’s sister.
On Dec. 2, 2020, at approximately 12:45 p.m., officers responded to the King Mao Chinese restaurant on Needmore Road where an armed robbery resulted in the death of an employee, 28-year-old Seth Stephens. The suspect fled and remained at large for almost two years.
An investigation by the Clarksville Police Special Operations Homicide Unit, with the assistance of the Joliet (Illinois) Police Department, led to the identification of Jaelyn Deon Gant as the suspect. Gant, who had been in custody in Illinois on unrelated charges, was extradited from the Western Illinois Correctional Center to the Montgomery County Jail on Nov. 9, 2022.
Here are three takeaways from testimony so far in the trial.
1. Mother of victim testifies
Rachael Stephens, the mother of the victim, was the first witness to be called to the stand, donning a bright smile as she spoke about her son.
“He loved working in the restaurants, he loved to cook,” Rachael said. “He could make anyone around him crack up laughing, he was very funny, and to me, he was very loving and good. He loved animals and was just a great guy to be around.”
According to Rachael, her son had displayed signs early on of having autism. They’d taken him for tests but never confirmed until many years later when Stephens had a son of his own who also has autism.
They lived in Fort Deposit, Alabama, until a family emergency brought them back to Clarksville in 2020.
On Dec. 2, 2020, Rachael said that she and her daughter were heading to IHop for an early lunch and passed the King Mao restaurant where Seth was scheduled to work that day. As they looked over, she saw the parking lot flooded with blue lights and yellow police tape.
Without wasting another second, she pulled into the nearby Home Depot parking lot and went over where she was stopped by law enforcement. When she informed them that her son worked in the restaurant, the officer escorted her over to where the employees were being held to help her find her son, not knowing that he was the victim of the shooting that had just occurred.
“When he had taken me next door where the other employees had been taken, the officer asked one of the employees if she knew Seth Stephens,” Rachael recalled, the smile on her face long since gone as tears began to fall. “She said yes, and he said, ‘Where is he?’ And she said, ‘He’s gone to the hospital.'”
2. King Mao owners testify
With the help of a Mandarin Chinese translator, Dong Dong Jiang and Wen Huan Dong, owners of the King Mao restaurant, recalled the day that their business was robbed and one of their trusted employees was killed.
Wei Ralph
“We only keep $150 in the register,” Wen Huan Dong told the jury. “Seth had volunteered to work for me that day. This was when COVID was at its best and I had been working straight for two weeks, so I wasn’t there when the shooting happened.”
Her husband, Dong Dong Jiang, however, had been there since about 10 a.m., prepping the restaurant to open at 11 a.m.
“I work in the back in the kitchen with the cooks,” he said. “I heard a loud bang, and I went to go check on the front when I heard two more bangs, gunshots. … I was so scared, I dared not go.”
But after a minute and all was silent, Dong Dong Jiang mustered the courage to scope out the front and saw a “shadow” fleeing the store. Lying beneath the register was Seth, one of his employees, bleeding profusely.
“I called my wife and told her to call the police and come here because my English is not very good.”
3. ‘He contemplated killing me, ’cause I knew’
Rebeckah Fields had been in Clarksville with her brother, Gant, and children for about a week after Thanksgiving, and on the final day, Fields went to her friend’s apartment at Paddock Place to pick up some body wash. When she had left there, Gant joined her for the five-minute drive.
Then, Fields exited the car, knocked on the door, and even called her friend but received no answer. After a few moments with no response, she returned to her vehicle, but her brother, Gant, was nowhere to be seen. She waited about five to seven minutes, and just as she debated leaving him, Gant returned with his black hoodie pulled over his head and got in the car, stating he had had to make a phone call.
But as they got back to Illinois, Gant pulled her aside for a private conversation where she says he confessed to her that he went to a nearby Chinese restaurant while she was busy at the apartment and robbed the place, shooting the cashier.
“They pulled the money out of the register, and when he told them to open the safe, they said there wasn’t any money in there,” Fields said Gant told her. “The person that was holding the money said, ‘If you want this money, you’re going to have to use that (gun). In that moment, he said that he felt ‘tried.’
“So he shot him, and he shot him multiple times, and every time he shot him, the man hollered,” Fields said. “He told me if I knew what was best for me, I needed to keep my mouth shut.”
According to Fields, Gant didn’t seem concerned about getting caught since he was wearing a face mask and said police would never be able to prove it was him. But with this alleged confession, Gant, over time, began to see his sister as a liability and threatened her silence with violence over the coming months.
In February 2021, Gant got into a car accident in Illinois and fled the scene. He came to his sister that night, visibly panicked as he told her that the gun he’d used in the King Mao shooting was still in the car, and police would undoubtedly trace it back to him.
“He told me he had contemplated killing me because I was the only one who could connect him to what he did,” Fields said as she recalled that night. “In subsequent conversations, he told me he should have killed me when he had the chance.”
The trial resumes Wednesday morning.
DON’T MISS A STORY: Sign up for the free daily Clarksville Now email newsletter