Teachers Killer gets death penalty

Nicholas Smith

A Calhoun county judge Monday afternoon sentenced 24 year old Nicholas Smith of Anniston to death by lethal injection for the April 2011 kidnapping and killing of Wellborn Elementary School teacher Kevin Thompson.  A Calhoun county jury In July recommended that Smith be put to death for his involvement in the teacher’s murder.  Prosecutors said during the nine-day trial that Smith, Tyrone Thompson and Jovon Gaston kidnapped the third-grade teacher on April 20, 2011, from his Jacksonville apartment, took him to several ATMs, robbed him of $400 at gunpoint and stabbed him to death with a steak knife leaving his body alongside hiway 278 in Cherokee county. Tyrone Thompson will be the next defendant to be tried.  A trial date has yet to be set.