Two Men In Custody After String of Deadly Robberies In Nashville

Two men are in police custody in Tennessee after a string of brutal slayings in Nashville and a suburb outside the city that police said were the work of “cold-blooded killers,” officials announced Monday evening.

Demontrey Logsdon, 20, and Lacory Lytle, 24, were wanted for questioning in the robbery and murder of a couple outside a Nashville nightclub Friday night, as well as the Aug. 13 murder of a 31-year-old man in the Nashville suburb of Madison, police said.

Logsdon, who was also wanted in connection with his alleged role in helping another man kidnap the man’s girlfriend at gunpoint the week before, was arrested Monday by officers with the Nashville Metropolitan Police Department’s gang squad and United States Marshals, according to a statement from police.

Lytle, who is accused of using the credit card of one of the surviving victims of the nightclub parking-lot robbery, turned himself in Monday evening, police said.

The crime spree, which police originally believed to be unconnected acts of violence, began Aug. 8, when someone in a dark-colored sedan pulled up next to a woman walking her dogs around 12:30 a.m. and shot her in the lower back with a rifle after “words were exchanged,” according to the Nashville Tennessean.

The victim managed to call 911, but is now paralyzed from the gunshot, the Tennessean reports.

The violence continued at 5 a.m. Aug. 14, when 31-year-old Kendall Rice was walking to the bus stop in Madison, a suburb of Nashville, police said. As he strolled, a dark-colored sedan pulled up next to him and someone inside the vehicle fatally shot Rice with a rifle, stealing personal belongings and leaving him for dead, the Tennessean reports.

Just 15 minutes after Rice was shot, a man was shot during an attempted robbery in a nearby apartment complex, according to the Tennessean. Police in nearby Goodlettsville were also investigating a possibly connected robbery that took place around 4:45 a.m., officials told the newspaper.

Three days later, early on Friday morning, two men accosted 30-year-old Jaime Sorrentonio, 33-year-old Bartley Teal, and two friends in the parking lot of Cobra Nashville, a nightclub, in an effort to rob the group, police said. The two gunmen opened fire on the group, killing Teal and Sorrentonio, but leaving the other two vctims unharmed, police said.

Teal had been celebrating his birthday at the bar that night, according to the Tennessean, whose reporter spoke with a grieving friend outside the bar days after the brutal murder.

“It could have been any of us,” said Julie Ewell, 38, a friend of Teal’s who told the Tennessean that she had bought her friend some drinks and left before him and Sarrantonio.

Neither Lytle nor Logsdon have been identified as suspects in those incidents, but investigators charged Logsdon with helping Horace Williamson III force Williamson’s girlfriend into a car at gunpoint Friday night, according to a statement from police.

Williamson was also wanted in connection with a robbery in which he allegedly robbed and carjacked a Good Samaritan who had stopped alongside the highway to help an injured dog Aug. 12, police said Monday evening.

Lytle, meanwhile, is accused of credit-card fraud after allegedly using a credit card stolen from one of the victims of the Cobra Nashville robbery and shooting, police said.

The rash of violent shootings, robberies, and carjackings left the city on edge as police tried to connect the dots, according to the Tennessean.

[Photo: Demontrey Logsdon, left, and Lacory Lytle. Nashville Metropolitan Police Department]