Suspect in deadly 2017 Barcelona Wine Bar robbery changes plea to guilty
ATLANTA - One of the suspects in the 2017 deadly shooting and robbery at Barcelona Wine Bar in West Midtown has changed his plea.
Carlous Bailey is already serving 20 years in state prison for a different armed robbery that happened in 2017. He has now changed his plea to guilty in connection with the murder.
According to police, as employees were closing the restaurant for the night at around 2:30 a.m. on Nov, 19, 2017, four men stormed in the business.
The men, dressed in black hoodies, were seen on surveillance video near the dishwashing station binding the hands of employees with electrical tape.
Investigators said the men forced the manager, 29-year-old Chelsea Beller, into the upstairs office, where they made her open the safe before they mercilessly shot her. Beller was rushed to Grady Memorial Hospital but later died.
Bailey was charged with murder and armed robbery in connection with the case in Jan. 2018. Police said he was already booked into the DeKalb County Jail on different charges stem from a similar robbery at the Pinewood restaurant in Decatur in May 2017. Bailey was a former employee of that restaurant.
The other three suspects in the Barcelona robbery, Terry Jones, Samuel Ott, and Ira Williams, all pleaded not guilty to their charges in 2018 along with Bailey. It is not known if they have made similar plea changes.