A former University of South Alabama and McGill-Toolen High School football player will spend the remainder of his life in a Mississippi prison for the murder of a man inside a Mississippi coast casino in 2021.

Jereme Lamond Jones, 32, was found guilty by a Harrison County (Miss.) jury Thursday of killing Randy Johnson, a well-known Gulfport barber and father of three, the Sun Herald reports.

As a senior at McGill-Toolen High School, he played in the Alabama-Mississippi All-Star Game and would go on to play five years for the USA Jaguars, twice leading the team in receptions. He would later play two seasons in the Indoor Football League and coached at receivers at McGill-Toolen from 2015-2016.

But on Sept. 18, 2021, Jones was in Biloxi and, according to video surveillance and testimony at trial, was the instigator of an altercation between himself and Johnson, who was at the casino with friend Tamara Willis to celebrate her birthday.

The two men went outside into the parking garage and a fight ensued. Video shows Johnson throwing the first punches, with Jones then fighting back. The two men went to the ground and the gun Jones was carrying fell out of his waistband, according to the report.

Johnson saw the gun and ran back into the casino, with Jones in pursuit. Johnson ran through crowds and around tables until he tripped and fell. Jones caught up to him and shot him in a killing which prosecutors described as an “execution.”

Guests inside the casino at the time screamed, ran, and ducked for cover, according to WLOX, while one began CPR on Johnson, who later died from his wounds.

Jones fled the scene, but was arrested a short time later, still armed with the gun, near the Biloxi Bay Bridge adjacent to the Golden Nugget.

“Our defendant is chasing an unarmed man who’s running away from him, and he’s trying to tell you it’s self defense,” Harrison County District Attorney Crosby Parker said in his closing argument. “You wouldn’t buy that story anywhere else in your life. You wouldn’t buy it to work. You wouldn’t buy it at home. Don’t buy it here. It’s ridiculous.”

The jury deliberated for less than an hour Thursday before convicted Jones, the newspaper reported.