A Lexington County man will spend the rest of his life in prison for killing two people in armed robberies within a single month — a sentence that delivers accountability only after the system already failed both victims.
Allon Adams, 25, of Leesville, pleaded guilty to murder in the November 2023 shooting death of Devon Tricoche and was sentenced to 30 additional years in prison, the 11th Circuit Solicitor's Office announced. That sentence runs concurrent with the life term Adams already received in November 2025 for murdering Tony Etheredge Jr. one month after Tricoche's death.
Two men are dead because the system couldn't stop Adams between his first kill and his second.
According to WIS, investigators said Adams and an accomplice, Cady Keener, planned an armed robbery near the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Leesville in November 2023. Tricoche was shot 12 times. His body was discovered in Aiken County.
Before law enforcement caught up with him, Adams struck again. In December 2023, he and Keener targeted Etheredge on Parrish Road in another robbery. A third suspect, Roosevelt Garaway, was later charged as an accessory after investigators accused him of helping dispose of Etheredge's body, which was recovered from Black Creek in February 2024.
Solicitor Rick Hubbard called the outcome justice. "Today's sentence brings a measure of justice to the families of Tony Etheredge Jr. and Devon Tricoche, whose lives were taken through senseless and devastating violence," Hubbard said in a statement. "With this life sentence and additional concurrent term, Allon Adams is held fully accountable for the violence he inflicted."
"Fully accountable" — but only after two men were gunned down. Adams is ineligible for parole. Keener's criminal case remains pending as of August 2026.
A man willing to shoot someone twelve times during a robbery didn't wake up violent in November 2023. The system had every chance to identify and contain a dangerous person before he escalated to murder — and then, after the first killing, had a window to stop him before he struck again. Both windows closed with bodies on the ground.
Adams will die in prison. That's the right outcome. But two families are burying loved ones because the apparatus that's supposed to protect the public couldn't move fast enough to catch a killer between his first act and his second. What broke down — and who bears that failure — remains the question nobody in the courthouse is answering.
