JONESBOROUGH, Tenn. (WJHL) — A Johnson City man who allegedly committed multiple felonies shortly after leaving prison, including second-degree murder, was found guilty of a separate felony drug charge in a jury trial Wednesday.
Billy Anderson, who Johnson City police say shot and killed 20-year-old Brionah Tester in March 2022, was convicted of possessing methamphetamine with intent to sell or deliver. The class B felony carries a sentence of 8 to 30 years.
But it’s just one of numerous cases Anderson, 34, faces after racking up nearly 20 separate charges from within a few weeks of his September 2021 release from prison until he was arrested in early April 2022. It wasn’t until then that authorities held Anderson without bond because any criminal charge was a probation violation, even though they could have done so as early as Sept. 22, 2021.
That was the date Johnson City Police Officer Jeff Stork responded to a man passed out in a car at a Mcdonald’s parking lot. An affidavit says Anderson was found with six bags of methamphetamine totaling 29 grams, along with some marijuana.
As the first offense Anderson committed after his release from Hardeman County Correctional Facility, a state prison, earlier that month, it was his first to go to trial.
Anderson bonded out on a $10,000 bond after that Sept. 22, 2021 arrest and was arrested six times between September and January of 2022, including four times with significant amounts of methamphetamine.
Assistant District Attorney Dennis Brooks was the first to put the pieces together when he got a stack of files on Anderson after being assigned his case in February 2022.
He filed a motion to revoke Anderson’s bond, but that was due to be heard April 4. Tester was killed two weeks before that scheduled court date and Anderson was picked up March 21 in a car theft case and held without bond from that point.
Anderson, who has collected two additional charges while inside the Washington County Detention Center — one for allegedly assaulting a corrections officer and another for allegedly trying to kill a fellow inmate — has recall hearings on most of those charges, including Tester’s killing, Aug. 21.
He is scheduled to be in court Friday on the attempted first-degree murder charge related to the alleged assault on another inmate.
