NEW ORLEANS — “If you use our children, you will pay dearly just like Mr. Reaux, you will spend the rest of your life in Angola or in a pine box if you get a child to commit your crime…we are coming after you.”
That is what Orleans District Attorney Jason Williams said at a press conference Friday as he announced the conviction of a man prosecutors say orchestrated the fatal shooting of a local rapper known as 'Young Greatness.'
“I need to get my point across to the parents of these young children…please y’all, get y’alls children…get your babies because that slow walk to that sad tomb I had to take…is not a walk y’all want to take,” Jones’ mother, Jeannie Rose heartfelt said at the D.A’s conference. “Get your children y’all. Grab a hold of your children because all I have is memories and a tomb. Y’all don’t want that.”
After hours of deliberation on Thursday, a jury convicted Donald Reaux, 43, of second-degree murder in the 2018 murder of 34-year-old Theodore Jones who goes by the artist name ‘Young Greatness.’
Reaux faces a mandatory life in prison when he is sentenced on Feb. 8 for Second-Degree Murder, Obstruction of Justice, and Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice.
Over three days, Orleans Parish Criminal District Court prosecutors described to the jury how Reaux enlisted his two teenage cousins, Lovance Wix and Donny Maxwell, armed them with handguns, and instructed them to ambush Jones at a Waffle House on Elysian Fields on Oct 29, 2018.
The plan, prosecutors say, was for Reaux to meet Jones there, and the two armed teens to approach and rob Jones of his marijuana. The teens ultimately shot Jones in the back in the incident. Jones attempted to flee but died from his wounds in the parking lot.
D.A. Williams says the teens were already convicted and serving a sentence for their role in the murder.
Jones left behind a 14-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old son.
Jones was born in New Orleans but moved to Houston after Hurricane Katrina. Police say Jones was in town for a funeral at the time of the fatal shooting.
Jones signed with Cash Money records in 2017 after releasing the single "Moolah" in 2015 under the Quality Control label.
“The first time I heard him, I knew he was going to be big,” Cash Money Records co-founder Bryan “Birdman" Williams said at the time. “He’s got a grasp on melody that few artists have. It’s the sound of the future.”