Alamance County jury acquits man in Graham teen killings case

An Alamance County jury cleared Tyshawn Esamuel Wiley of two first-degree murder charges Friday, ending the trial tied to the August 25, 2022, killings of two Graham teenagers near Graham Village Apartments on East Hanover Road.

Jurors took about seven hours over parts of two days to reach not-guilty verdicts after hearing about 115 pieces of evidence in Alamance County Superior Court. The result was striking because Wiley had confessed during a one hour, 45-minute police interview on September 20, 2022, yet the defense argued his statement reflected poor judgment and an effort to protect others, not actual guilt. Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Andrew Hanford presided over the case and denied defense motions to dismiss the charges.

The killings drew Graham police to Graham Village Apartments, 901 East Hanover Road, after a shots-fired call on the afternoon of August 25, 2022. Officers found an 18-year-old male wounded in the parking lot. Later, they found the bodies of two 16-year-old boys in the woods behind the complex. The wounded teenager survived with non-life-threatening injuries. The dead teenagers were identified as Melvin Wiley and Malik Martin, both Graham residents. Family members said Melvin Wiley was Tyshawn Wiley’s cousin, and Martin died on the night of his 16th birthday after attending a party.

The case moved through years of court proceedings before reaching the trial. Wiley and Kymoni Melendez-Poteat were first charged as juveniles and held in secure custody in September 2022. On October 11, 2022, then-Chief District Court Judge Brad Allen sent Wiley to superior court after a grand jury indictment. Alamance News reported that an early grand jury filing used the wrong birth date, mixing up Wiley’s date of birth with Melendez-Poteat’s, a procedural error that briefly complicated the record.

Melendez-Poteat later took a different path in the case. He pleaded guilty in October 2025 to two counts of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill or inflict serious injury. He received a life sentence plus a consecutive term of roughly seven to 10 years and is incarcerated at Foothills Correctional Institution in Morganton. Taijon Martre Laury was also arrested in September 2022 and charged with two counts of accessory after the fact to first-degree murder.

For Graham and the families left to absorb the outcome, the verdict closes one chapter but leaves the larger question unresolved: whether anyone will ultimately be held accountable for the deaths of Melvin Wiley and Malik Martin.