DeKalb County: Jimmy Davis Mills sentenced to life in violent Brookhaven home invasion

DEKALB COUNTY, GA—DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston announces the conviction by jury trial of a DeKalb County man charged with a violent home invasion and stabbing in Brookhaven.   

 Jimmy David Mills, 60, was found guilty of Home Invasion in the First Degree, Aggravated Assault, Possession of a Knife During the Commission of Certain Felonies, and Criminal Trespass in connection with the incident on Sept. 17, 2020. 

Immediately following the July 31, 2025 guilty verdicts, DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Courtney L. Johnson, who presided over the trial, sentenced Mills to Life in Prison plus 26 years to serve consecutively. 

According to the investigation, at around 4 p.m. officers with the Brookhaven Police Department responded to a report of a home invasion in the 1600 block of North Druid Hills Drive, NE.   Surveillance video from the home showed Defendant Mills enter the house.  The couple who lived there was home with their baby at the time. 

The wife had just put the baby down for a nap and took her phone into the bathroom so she could watch the baby monitor.  While she was in the shower, she got a notification from their home security system that someone had opened the back door.  She heard someone in the house and called out for them not to come into the bathroom.  Defendant Mills then entered the bathroom and asked her if she was alone. 

The woman started screaming and her husband, who was working in his office, heard her over his noise-cancelling headphones.  He went to see what was wrong and saw Mills in the bathroom.  The husband told Mills to get out, but Mills refused to leave the house.  The husband began pushing Defendant Mills to get him to leave the home. Mills continued to remain in the home, so the husband began punching him. 

Mills and the husband ended up in the kitchen.  Mills reached into his pocket and started to pull out a knife.  The husband went to get a bat.  Mills followed the man and began attacking the husband, stabbing him in the stomach and face, and slashing his arms. 

Mills then ran from the home and jumped a concrete wall down the street.  Police found the knife from the attack dropped behind that wall in the backyard of a nearby home.  They also discovered a blood trail leading to the home’s back entrance and blood smeared on the door as if Mills tried to get inside.

Mills rang the doorbell at another house down the street and asked to use the bathroom, but the woman who answered told him no and closed the door after seeing blood on his chest.    

As officers searched for Mills, a driver in the area stopped to notify them she saw a man walking down the street shirtless with something in his hand.  She had also seen him climbing the wall.  Police went to the area where she described seeing him and detained Defendant Mills.  They found Mills holding his bloody shirt and arrested him. 

The case, assigned to the Trial Division, was prosecuted by Senior Assistant District Attorney Eliazette Johnson, with assistance from Assistant District Attorney Miriam Broussard, Victim Advocate Ambrosia Floyd and Victim Advocate Breanna Sawyer.  Brookhaven Police Department Detective Orange led the initial investigation.