Shooting of King Mao: Trial begins against man who allegedly killed a restaurant employee in 2020

CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – The jury trial of a man accused of murdering a Chinese restaurant employee in 2020 began Monday afternoon.

On December 2, 2020, at approximately 12:45 p.m., officers responded to 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 nearly two years.

An investigation by the Clarksville Police Department's Special Operations Task Force Homicide Unit, with assistance from the Joliet, Illinois Police Department, led to the identification of Jaelyn Deon Gant as a suspect. Gant, who was in custody in Illinois on unrelated charges, was extradited from the Western Illinois Correctional Center to the Montgomery County Jail on November 9, 2022.

Charge: “Cold-blooded robbery and murder”

On Monday, Gant, 31, sat at the defense table as the state presented its arguments.

“This case is about cold-blooded robbery and murder,” said Assistant District Attorney Marianne Bell. “It's about greed, ego, violence and it's about Seth Stephens.”

Bell told the jury that Stephens, a member of the Clarksville community, was a father, son, brother and uncle who were shot on the job. Gant, she argued, went to the restaurant with the intention of robbing it at gunpoint.

“Seth Stephens wouldn't give him (Gant) what he wanted, so Jaelyn Gant used the silver revolver and shot him three times,” Bell said. “Then she ripped the money from his dying hands and ran all the way back to Chicago.”

The case remained open, but all leads seemed to dry up until Bell of the Joliet Police Department said in February 2021 there had been a breakthrough in the case.

Evidence was found in an overturned vehicle in a field: a loaded silver revolver, a black hoodie with white writing, a greeting card and a cellphone. Bell said the phone contained a picture of the overturned car, a selfie of Gant holding a silver revolver and a phone search history for “shooting in Clarksville, Tennessee on December 2, 2020.”

A second cell phone, later seized after Gant’s arrest, contained even more incriminating search queries: “Shooting in Clarksville, Tennessee, December 2, 2020” and “Seth Stephens.”

Defense: No way to connect the dots

In the months leading up to the trial, Gant planned to represent himself. Prior to that, Clarksville Now had received several warnings from presiding judge Robert Bateman to Gant for disruptive behavior in the courtroom.

Now, under the representation of attorney Gordon Rahn, Gant’s defense arguments were presented.

“There is no doubt that a tragedy occurred on December 2, 2020,” Rahn told the jury. “What happened to Seth Stephens is something no one should have ever had to experience and his family should not have had to experience.”

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Rahn agreed with Bell that the jury would hear a lot of testimony and urged them to pay attention to the details.

“You have to recognize a lot of connections,” said Rahn. “Some facts are simply indisputable, there's no getting around them. But I would argue that at the end of the process the state will not be able to recognize all of these connections.”

“The absence of these points and the absence of a connection between them will be sufficient in this case to give rise to reasonable doubts.”

The trial is scheduled to continue at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday at the Montgomery County Courts Center.

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