This appeal is from James Eugene Brown’s conviction for malice murder, armed robbery, hijacking a motor vehicle, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, theft of services, and possession of a pistol by a person under the age of eighteen.1 Evidence adduced at trial supported a finding of the following as facts. The body of cab driver Vickie Forrester was found on a dirt road. She had been shot once in the head and once in the neck, both bullets traveling from right to left. Forrester had not been heard from since she picked up a fare from the local hospital who asked to be taken to the street on which Brown lived. Passing Forrester’s taxi on the road shortly after that dispatch, another cab driver saw Forrester driving and a young man riding as a passenger in the taxi’s front seat. Brown, who was 16 years old at the time, had called for a taxi that morning from a hospital emergency room where he had been seen for chest pains. Police found Brown that afternoon in the missing taxi in a Henry County high school parking lot. In the vehicle with him were two handguns, one later determined to be the murder weapon, and the other identified as the gun Forrester carried with her while working. Brown was carrying ammunition for the murder weapon. In the trunk of the car were a prescription and emergency room instructions that were made out to J. Brown, and magnetic taxi signs that had been removed from the vehicle. In a statement after his arrest, Brown said that he had “smoked” the taxi driver because she pointed a gun at him as he was preparing to pay his fare. He pushed the driver out of the car afterward, he said, commenting that he would do anything to see his girlfriend, who was a student at the school where he was arrested. He wanted “a ride” and told police he had planned this for a while. Brown had only had telephone and correspondence contacts with the female student he called his girlfriend; they had not met in person due to his lack of transportation. At trial, the student and her sister testified that on the day before the murder, Brown phoned and told them he shot a woman, left her on a dirt road, and took her car in order to have transportation to meet the girl at school the next day. Brown’s mother testified that Brown had threatened he would be doing “something really crazy” the week of the murder.
1. The evidence set forth above would authorize a finding that Brown, at age 16, summoned a taxi to the hospital with the intent to kill the driver and steal the taxi rather than merely to hire transportation, and that he carried out his plan, using the gun he had brought with him to kill the taxi driver and steal her gun and the taxi. The evidence was, therefore, sufficient to authorize a rational trier of fact to find Brown guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes of which he was convicted. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 99 SC 2781, 61 LE2d 560 1979; Corza v. State, 273 Ga. 164 1 539 SE2d 149 2000. Contrary to Brown’s argument regarding the sufficiency of the evidence, “the State was not required to present the testimony of an eyewitness to the homicide in order to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant murdered the victim. Cits.” Turner v. State, 273 Ga. 340 1 541 SE2d 641 2001.
