Inset: Jimmy Mills (Brookhaven Police Department). Background: The area near where Mills committed a violent home invasion in Brookhaven, Ga. (Google Maps).
A Georgia man will spend the rest of his life behind bars for a violent home invasion that left a woman terrified and her husband badly injured, a court recently determined.
In late July, Jimmy David Mills, 60, was found guilty by a jury of home invasion in the first degree, aggravated assault, possession of a knife during the commission of certain felonies, and criminal trespass.
On Tuesday, the DeKalb County District Attorney issued a press release announcing Mills was sentenced to life plus 26 years in prison. Those sentences will be served consecutively, or one after another.
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On September 17, 2020, the since-condemned man entered the home on North Druid Hills Drive North East in Brookhaven – a medium-sized city located in the northeastern suburbs of Atlanta.
“Surveillance video from the home showed Defendant Mills enter the house,” the press release reads. “The couple who lived there was home with their baby at the time.”
The wife had just put her child to bed for a nap and took her phone into the bathroom so she could monitor the baby, prosecutors said. While in the shower, however, the woman received a notification from a separate application – the home security system. Someone had entered through the back door, the app alerted.
That someone was Mills.
“She heard someone in the house and called out for them not to come into the bathroom,” the press release goes on. “Mills then entered the bathroom and asked her if she was alone.”
The woman screamed so loud her husband heard her over his noise-canceling headphones and rushed over to see what the matter was.
Upon finding Mills in his bathroom, the man told him to leave.
But the defendant would not go. So, the man began pushing the stranger. When that did not work, the husband began punching him.
The two men eventually made their way into the kitchen. There, Mills reached into his pocket and started to pull out a knife he already had on his person. So, the husband responded and went to get a bat.
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“Mills followed the man and began attacking the husband, stabbing him in the stomach and face, and slashing his arms,” the press release continues.
The husband was able to hit his attacker with the bat at least once, he told Atlanta-based ABC affiliate WSB.
“That’s when he came in straight for my eye,” the husband said. “It was obvious he was trying to attack my eye and missed by this much. I thought, ‘I might die right now. My life might end right now.'”
After the seemingly senseless attack, the defendant fled, jumping over a nearby concrete wall and haphazardly disposing of his weapon, according to law enforcement. A trail of blood was later found leading to the back door – with crimson smeared across the door itself.
Mills rang a doorbell at a home down the street but was rebuffed by the woman who answered because of the blood she saw on his chest.
Meanwhile, a driver pulled over to the amassed investigators in the area and described seeing a shirtless man jump over a wall and then carry an unknown object through the street.
The driver then led officers to Mills’ location – where he was found clutching his own bloody shirt and promptly arrested.
At the time of Mills’ arrest, the Brookhaven Police Department described the incident as “truly the stuff nightmares are made of,” Atlanta-based Fox affiliate WAGA reported.
Immediately after being found guilty, Mills was sentenced by DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Courtney L. Johnson, the DA said.
