Prosecutors said the fifth-grade teacher was a gang member who helped lead the home invasion.
CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. — A former DeKalb County elementary school teacher was convicted Tuesday in the 2016 shooting deaths of an 11-year-old girl and her 15-year-old brother during a gang retaliation attack at their home south of Atlanta.
Michael White, a former fifth-grade teacher, was found guilty on 44 counts, according to the Clayton County District Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors said White was tied to the Rolling 20s Crips and took part in a home invasion on Libby Lane in October 2016 that ended with Tatiyana Coates and Daveon Coates dead. Sentencing has not been scheduled.
The verdict closes the trial phase of a case that has stretched for years and involved a web of defendants, plea deals and earlier convictions. Investigators and prosecutors have said the children were not the intended targets and had no gang ties. The attack, authorities said, was retaliation for stolen guns, and the gunfire struck the Coates children as they slept inside a home where multiple children were present.
Clayton County District Attorney Tasha Mosley confirmed White’s conviction after the jury returned its verdict in Clayton County court. The case drew intense attention because police and school officials said White was teaching at the time, working in an elementary school classroom by day while, prosecutors said, he remained involved in gang activity away from campus. White was arrested at school in 2018, a moment authorities later pointed to as a stark example of what investigators called “hiding in plain sight.”
The shootings happened on Oct. 22, 2016, at a residence on Libby Lane in the Jonesboro area of Clayton County. Police said a 911 call came from inside the home as someone reported intruders had entered and shots had been fired. When officers arrived, they found Tatiyana Coates, 11, and Daveon Coates, 15, suffering from gunshot wounds. Both children died at the scene, authorities said at the time. Investigators said several children were home when the invasion unfolded, and the Coates siblings were among those inside.
Investigators have described the attack as part of a gang dispute rather than a personal conflict with the Coates family. Police said the group came to the house looking for a teenage boy who had recently been staying there with family members after moving from out of state. Authorities said the boy was believed to have stolen firearms connected to a gang, setting off a retaliatory search. That teen was not at the home when the gunmen arrived, prosecutors have said, but the assault continued anyway.
Deputy Chief Assistant District Attorney La’Carrian Blount described White’s role as the case was presented, saying the group forced its way inside and that White kicked in the door. Blount said White carried a shotgun into the home, though prosecutors said others fired the shots that killed the children. The account painted White not as a bystander but as an active participant in the invasion, a point prosecutors leaned on while asking jurors to hold him responsible for the deaths.
Authorities have long said the victims had no gang involvement. Mosley has said the children were innocent victims of a retaliation incident. Police officials who spoke about the case in earlier years emphasized that the intended target was someone else, and that the children paid the price for violence they had nothing to do with. The case became one of Clayton County’s most painful examples of how gang disputes can spill into homes and strike families with no connection to the conflict.
In the years after the killings, investigators said they relied on witness statements and other evidence to identify suspects. In earlier announcements, police credited help from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation with a composite sketch linked to the case, and said that witness information helped point them toward White. When he was taken into custody in 2018, authorities said he was arrested at Toney Elementary School, where he worked as a teacher. The arrest led the DeKalb County School District to address his employment publicly as the case moved forward.
The broader Libby Lane case included multiple defendants accused of acting together as part of a street gang. Court records and prior reporting show that several people charged in the case were convicted at trial or resolved their charges through guilty pleas. Two defendants were convicted in 2023 and sentenced to life in prison without parole, a development that underscored the seriousness of the prosecution’s theory that the invasion was a coordinated retaliation, not a random burglary.
Prosecutors have said White was the final defendant to stand trial in the case, making Tuesday’s verdict a major milestone for families and investigators who have tracked the case through years of court dates. With earlier convictions and pleas already in place, White’s trial became the last contested fight over responsibility for the children’s deaths, and the outcome gives the court system its final jury verdict tied to the invasion itself.
Still, major questions remain about sentencing and how the court will weigh White’s role compared with others involved. The 44-count conviction leaves open the next stage: a sentencing hearing where prosecutors and defense attorneys can argue over punishment and present evidence about aggravating and mitigating factors. Judges also often allow families to address the court before a sentence is imposed in homicide cases, a moment that can bring renewed attention to the impact of the crime on surviving relatives.
For Clayton County, the case has carried added weight because of the victims’ ages and because the killings happened inside a home. The deaths of a middle school-age boy and an elementary school-age girl were repeatedly cited by officials as a reminder of the human cost of gang violence. The case also raised concerns about how someone accused of serious crimes was able to work around children, though investigators have not suggested the school was tied to the murders beyond being the site of White’s arrest.
Neighbors in the Libby Lane area have previously described the shock of learning that the fatal attack was linked to a wider gang dispute rather than a conflict within the neighborhood. Officials have said the invasion happened quickly and violently, leaving the household devastated and raising broader fears about safety when retaliation disputes spill into family spaces. The image of children asleep when shots were fired became central to how the case was discussed publicly, reinforcing prosecutors’ argument that the victims were defenseless and uninvolved.
White’s conviction may also influence how future gang cases are tried in the county, especially those that rely heavily on cooperation from witnesses and co-defendants. Gang prosecutions often involve contested accounts of who fired which shots and who planned an attack, and prosecutors frequently argue that participants in a coordinated invasion share responsibility for the outcome. In this case, prosecutors maintained that even if White did not pull the trigger, his actions in helping carry out the invasion supported murder counts and related charges.
Defense arguments were not detailed in the brief public summaries released after the verdict, and the court record will determine what issues may be raised in post-trial motions or an appeal. A conviction on dozens of counts can lead to a long sentencing process, and appeals in complex multi-defendant cases can take years. For now, the guilty verdict stands as the central development, with sentencing expected to follow once a hearing date is set.
As the legal process moves toward sentencing, the case remains a reminder of two lives lost in a matter of moments. Tatiyana Coates was 11, an age when many children are still in elementary school, and Daveon Coates was 15, an age when most teenagers are focused on school and friends. Authorities have said the siblings had no reason to expect violence would crash into their home that night, and prosecutors have argued that the retaliation logic behind the invasion only deepens the tragedy.
Author note: Last updated February 11, 2026.