Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Two men pleaded guilty to murder Monday in the Circuit Criminal Court of Lowndes County. Cornelius Thomas, Jr. and Tyler Edmonds, each pleaded guilty in separate murder trials heard by Judge Cleveland Poole.

According to District Attorney Charlotte Tesmer, both men pleaded “blind.”

“Thomas [and Edmonds] pleaded ‘blind,” Tesmer said. “This means [they] pleaded guilty to murder with no agreement of sentence with the state.”

Thomas’s guilty plea was accepted by the court in his trial for the 2021 murder of 29-year-old Brandon Lamar Middleton who was found lying unresponsive on the floor of the Mosses Meat Market with a gunshot wound to the head.

Edmonds pleaded guilty Monday in the May 2020 murder of his father, 33-year-old Terrell Edmonds. At age 15, Edmonds was arrested at the scene of the murder after the shooting on Lowndes County Road 26 in Hope Hull.

Lowndes County Sheriff’s deputies reported to the scene and found Terrell Edmonds with an apparent gunshot wound and unresponsive. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

According to Tesmer, Edmonds, who was a juvenile at the time of the murder, was tried as an adult.

“He was a juvenile and was certified as an adult,” Tesmer said.

Both men are scheduled for sentencing on May 3.