The Shelby County Criminal Court in Tennessee deliberated for only about an hour on Sunday morning before convicting 25-year-old Keedrin Coppage for the brutal murder of his 18-year-old ex-girlfriend, whose body he left on a North Memphis street corner in 2020.
Coppage was convicted of first-degree murder and tampering with evidence.
He was automatically sentenced to life in prison for murder and will be sentenced later on for the tampering conviction, said Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich.
According to the testimony, Coppage dated 18-year-old Sabrina Nguyen for about a year, starting in the fall of 2018, but when she tried to end the relationship, he became angry and aggressive.
In December of 2019, Coppage was arrested on several occasions for making threatening phone calls, assaulting Nguyen, and kidnapping her outside of 201 Poplar where she was going to seek an Order of Protection.
At about 11:30 a.m. on Jan. 2, 2020, witnesses saw Coppage pull up to the curb at Jackson Avenue and Maple Drive in Nguyen’s car, remove her body from the trunk of the car, place it near the stop sign, and then drive away.
Police obtained neighborhood watch camera footage that confirmed these witnesses’ accounts.
The medical examiner reported that Nguyen had 38 sharp-force injuries, including two fatal stab wounds.
At the time of the murder, Coppage had outstanding warrants for aggravated kidnapping, aggravated assault, aggravated stalking, and theft of property — all of which were inside Nguyen’s car.
He was arrested the day after the murder and admitted placing her body at the intersection and discarding the clothing he was wearing at that time.
Coppage was indicted for the crime in August of 2020.
The case was handled by Assistant District Attorneys Marianne Bell and Venecia Patterson of the District Attorney’s Domestic Violence Unit which prosecutes cases involving homicide and domestic assault committed by intimate partners.
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