A Georgia man has been sentenced to life in prison for killing a woman in 2019 after briefly meeting her on a dating app. Fabiola Thomas, 39, was found in a bathtub by her roommate in June 2019 in her Roswell, Georgia, apartment, according to reports from FOX 5 Atlanta.
Antonio Wilson, then 38, was arrested and charged with murder months later, as reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution citing Roswell Police. The investigation began on June 8, 2019, after police received a panicked phone call from Thomas’ roommate, who said he found her in the bathtub and that “something bad had happened to her,” police said, Police found her unresponsive at the scene, and she was later pronounced dead at the hospital.
A medical examiner ruled several months later that her death was a homicide. During the investigation, authorities learned that Thomas and Wilson had met on a dating app shortly before the murder, according to WSB-TV.
“Ms. Thomas did everything that you would think you should do,” Assistant District Attorney Abigail Potter told WSB-TV in an interview. “She told her friends where she was going. She would only meet him in public places.”
When she did not want to continue seeing him, Wilson could not handle the rejection, prosecutors said. In a text message sent before her death, Thomas asked Wilson to “stop claiming” her. “Keep your ring, I’m not your woman, never was, stop claiming me because I never claimed u,” Thomas wrote in a text, as reported by 11 Alive.
On the day before she was killed, she “unfriended” Wilson, Senior Assistant District Attorney Nalda Charles said, though it wasn’t clear which messaging platform they were friends on. Wilson was arrested on Oct. 25, 2019, the day after Thomas’ death was ruled a homicide.
Following his trial, a jury deliberated for just 30 minutes before finding him guilty. On Tuesday, July 23, a judge sentenced Wilson to life in prison without the possibility of parole for malice murder, as reported by WSB-TV from a Fulton County court.