BOSTON, Feb. 4, 2015—A Suffolk Superior Court jury today convicted a repeat gun offender in the 2010 murder of 18-year-old Terrence Kelley, Jr., in Grove Hall, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

Jurors convicted DARIUS GIBSON (D.O.B. 8/16/90) of first-degree murder under the theories of deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty for chasing Kelley down Creston Street and shooting him on the afternoon of May 28, 2010. Jurors also convicted Gibson of unlawful possession of the .25 caliber semiautomatic handgun used in the shooting, and witness intimidation for threatening a person with information on the case.

Gibson faces a mandatory life term without the possibility of parole when he is sentenced Tuesday at 11:00 a.m.

During almost three weeks of trial, Assistant District Attorney Ian Polumbaum of the DA’s Homicide Unit proved that Gibson believed Kelley had robbed Gibson’s friend and drug supplier the night before the murder. When Gibson saw Kelley on Creston Street the next day, he chased Kelley down and shot him six times, killing him. Polumbaum also proved that Gibson threatened his former girlfriend in a bid to keep her from telling investigators what she knew about his involvement in the murder.

Gibson’s friend and would-be drug source, JAMES AUSTIN (D.O.B. 3/14/88), admitted last year to being an accessory after the fact to Kelley’s murder. He is currently serving a six- to eight-year prison sentence. Had the case proceeded to trial, Polumbaum would have proven that Austin, who witnessed the murder, lied when he told Boston Police homicide detectives that he didn’t know Kelley or Kelley’s assailant – a factor, Conley said, in the long span of time between the homicide and the defendants’ 2012 indictments.

“Cases like this one prove that we will never, ever give up on solving a homicide,” Conley said. “When police and prosecutors were met by silence and lies, they continued to dig until they built a case that would support an indictment, a conviction, and a verdict that will be upheld on appeal. Boston Police and Suffolk prosecutors are the very best in this business.”

At the time of his Nov. 14, 2012, indictment, Gibson was already in custody on separate charges that he shot three men in Brockton and had pleaded guilty to, but had not yet been sentenced for, federal firearms offenses. He has since been convicted in that case.  In the murder trial, he was represented by attorney Arthur Kelly.

Timothy Munzert was the DA’s assigned victim-witness advocate.

–30–

All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.