A New Orleans judge ruled Friday that convicted felon Kelvin Atkins will spend the rest of his natural life behind bars for killing a mother of two and the niece of a local judge in a 19-shot Glock attack.
Atkins, 39, was sentenced by Judge Calvin Johnson after a jury found him guilty of fatally shooting his former partner, 33-year-old Johnshane “Nay” Powell, on a Louisiana street on July 3, 2023, NOLA.com reported.
“Here we are again looking failure in the face, looking you in the face,” Johnson told Atkins during the sentencing hearing.
Prosecutors said Atkins had been arrested just two days before the slaying on domestic-abuse allegations.
Powell had contacted police and accused Atkins of slapping her, pulling her hair and biting her before he allegedly took a gun from her purse, authorities said.
At the time, Atkins was on parole for a separate felony. Despite Powell’s concerns, he was released after posting bail, according to authorities.
“What happens if y’all let him go and I end up dead tomorrow,” Powell, the mother of two daughters, asked police in the days before her death, prosecutors said.
Authorities alleged that Atkins returned and opened fire, emptying a Glock fitted with a drum magazine.
Prosecutors said Atkins feared Powell would testify against him in the domestic-abuse case, potentially exposing him to a harsher sentence because of his prior conviction.
Even as she lay dying, Powell was able to identify her attacker as “K,” according to body-camera footage. Prosecutors said the nickname was a shortened version of Atkins’ first name.
Atkins was convicted after an earlier trial ended with a deadlocked jury. That panel found him guilty on two other charges but did not reach a verdict in Powell’s killing.
During the weeklong retrial, prosecutors called Criminal District Judge Kimya Holmes, Powell’s aunt, to testify.
Holmes told the court that she had been forced to tell Powell’s two daughters their mother had died, saying that nothing “can prepare you for that.”
“She loved hard, and if she cared about you, she protected you with all that she had,” Holmes said of her niece.
Atkins was convicted of second-degree murder in September and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
