Ja’marion Rolle and Ja’Khi Clark were students at separate DeKalb County schools when a weekend confrontation ended in gunfire.
STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga. — The deaths of 11-year-old Ja’marion Rolle and his 12-year-old brother, Ja’Khi Clark, reached two DeKalb County schools at once after the boys were shot during a weekend confrontation outside their family’s apartment, leaving classmates and educators grieving as police pursued a criminal case against an 18-year-old suspect.
Ja’marion was a fifth grader at Stone Mill Elementary School. Ja’Khi attended Stone Mountain Middle School as a sixth grader. Their principals notified their school communities after the Sept. 20 shooting and made counselors, psychologists and other support staff available, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The brothers were among four related people struck by gunfire that Sunday evening on North Hairston Road. Two women survived. For the boys’ family, the shooting meant the loss of two children at the same gathering; for the school district, it meant two campuses confronting the death of students at the start of a new week.
The brothers’ mother described the Sunday gathering as a family barbecue. She told WSB-TV that relatives had been spending time together when people connected to an earlier dispute arrived. A confrontation developed outside, and she heard gunshots. In her account, she came outside and found both sons wounded. Ja’marion died at the scene. Ja’Khi was taken to a hospital but later died. Police said the two other victims were women from the same family. Authorities initially gave their ages as 19 and 39, though Police Chief Gregory Padrick later said the older woman was 37.
The gathering had been preceded by a conflict several days earlier. The boys’ mother told police and local television reporters that there had been a fight following a football game on Sept. 17. Arrest warrants later described allegations that a group of juveniles had been bullying one person while the parties were playing football together. The identity of that person was redacted in records cited by the AJC. Those allegations are part of investigators’ account of what preceded the shooting, but they do not by themselves establish why each participant went to the apartment complex three days later or what every person intended when the confrontation began.
Police records provided a more detailed description of the family’s Sunday afternoon than the initial reports of the shooting. The mother told investigators that a group of girls came to the apartment complex wanting to fight her sons, according to the AJC’s account of an incident report. The girls left and later returned. The mother said she then saw a man she believed had a gun. Items were thrown, and the dispute expanded until multiple people were fighting. Arrest warrants allege that Julian Ellis, then 18, became involved and fired a weapon during the confrontation. Ellis has not been convicted, and his attorney has said the public record does not yet tell the whole story.
Police said the shooting itself was recorded on video. The arrest warrants said members of the group with Ellis identified him as the person who had the firearm. Investigators also documented shell casings in the grass and bullet damage to a fence and an upstairs window. The boys’ mother said she gave police video after the people involved left the scene. Those pieces of evidence helped investigators identify a suspect, but the reviewed reports do not provide the full video, a complete forensic analysis or a final account of every person’s actions. Those issues remain matters for investigators and, if the case proceeds, the courts.
Ellis was arrested late Sept. 22, two days after the brothers were killed. DeKalb County police said he was charged with two counts of felony murder and six counts of aggravated assault. Other reports citing online jail records listed four aggravated-assault counts with a weapon. The available sources do not explain the difference. He made an initial court appearance Sept. 24, according to Atlanta News First. Public defender Daryl Queen was assigned to represent him and urged the public not to treat the early police narrative as a complete determination of what occurred.
Queen said additional evidence and context surrounding both the shooting and Ellis’ arrest needed examination through the investigative and judicial process. That caution is significant because arrest warrants set out probable-cause allegations rather than findings of guilt. Police allege Ellis fired during the confrontation, and witnesses associated with the group identified him, according to the warrants. The defense is entitled to challenge that evidence, the circumstances in which statements were obtained and any other part of the government’s case. No reviewed reporting through Nov. 8 established that Ellis had been convicted or that a trial had resolved the allegations.
While the criminal case began moving through the legal system, the school district dealt with the immediate absence of two children. Interim Superintendent Norman Sauce said after the shooting that school leaders, students and families carry a heavy burden when young people become victims of gun violence. The two brothers were at different stages of school, one still in elementary school and one newly in middle school, which spread the impact across separate student communities. Officials did not publicly release extensive personal details about the boys, and restrained coverage of the case has largely focused on their ages, schools, family relationship and the circumstances surrounding their deaths.
The deaths also became part of a broader conversation among DeKalb County officials about violence involving young people. Three days after the shooting, county and school leaders announced Education to Empowerment, a $250,000 school-based effort for students in grades six through 12. Officials said the initiative would include a 12-week program emphasizing conflict resolution, emotional intelligence, leadership and behavioral skills. They stressed that the program had been in development for about a year and was not designed as a direct response to this single shooting. Still, the timing placed the deaths of Ja’marion and Ja’Khi at the center of public discussion about what families and schools were facing.
The criminal investigation, however, remained focused on the specific events at the North Hairston Road complex. Police said they would continue examining whether anyone else bore responsibility. The documents described multiple people arriving, leaving and returning, and the mother’s account involved more than one confrontation before the gunfire. Yet the reviewed reporting identified Ellis as the only person publicly charged in the brothers’ deaths. Investigators had not released a complete account assigning roles to every person at the scene, and no reliable source reviewed for this article established additional murder charges arising from the incident.
By early October, DeKalb officials were still referring publicly to the brothers’ deaths while describing the county’s youth-violence response. The criminal case itself remained unresolved in the latest reliable reporting located for this article. What was established was narrower but consequential: two brothers, ages 11 and 12, were killed at a family gathering; two other relatives were wounded; an 18-year-old was arrested and accused of firing the weapon; and two schools were left supporting students and staff after losing children from their classrooms.
Author note: Last updated Nov. 8, 2026.