Freeman sentenced to life in prison for murder in 2022 | Villa Rican

Deborah Kayleigh Freeman was sentenced to life in prison for her role in the 2022 murder of 70-year-old Clovis Pruitt.

Freeman entered a plea deal in Carroll County Superior Court on August 15 and was sentenced by Judge Erica Tisinger to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

Pruitt was shot and killed in her Villa Rica home on May 22, 2022, by her then 31-year-old grandson Dakota Greenwood. Greenwood pleaded guilty but mentally ill in September 2023 and received a life sentence. He will be eligible for parole after 30 years.

Authorities said Greenwood shot and killed his grandmother three times. He and Freeman then called 911 to report that a masked African-American man ran into the house, exchanged shots with Pruitt, shot her, and then ran away. When Carroll County Sheriff's officers arrived, they found Freeman cleaning up the crime scene and “mopping up the blood around Mrs. Pruitt's body.”

Investigators said there was no evidence of a shooting, and a search for the suspected masked killer turned up nothing. Greenwood eventually confessed, and a subsequent search of his phone turned up messages in which he described killing Pruitt.

During Greenwood's sentencing, another of Pruitt's grandsons, Nathaniel Greenwood, described what his family experienced when they arrived at Pruitt's home on Askin Creek Road.

“The first thing we saw when we entered my grandparents' house was my grandfather, who was suffering from dementia and stage four lung cancer, sitting on the couch with his feet in my grandmother's blood,” he said.

As part of her negotiated confession, Freeman, a Winston resident who was 26 at the time of the murder, was sentenced to an additional 10 years in prison for evidence tampering, to be served concurrently with her life sentence.