Two men who had been indicted for murder pleaded guilty to lesser charges Friday in Troup Superior Court.

Dwayne Antonio Stevens, 25, of Riverdale was sentenced to 30 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter, armed robbery and two counts of aggravated assault.

He shot and killed Brian Truitt, 29, of LaGrange on Jan. 23, 2009, in a room at Super 8 motel on Lafayette Parkway. He also shot and wounded Antwon Marcel Cotton, 35, of West Point, and Kevin Lovett, 23, of LaGrange.

Lovett was partially paralyzed and remains confined to a wheelchair.

Malachi Alfredo Phillips, 28, of Lithonia pleaded guilty to a robbery charge and was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 10 years’ probation.

A mutual friend had arranged for Stevens to buy jewelry from Truitt, but Stevens planned to swindle the victim, District Attorney Pete Skandalakis said. The jewelry had been appraised at about $15,000.

“I want to apologize for the events that took place,” Stevens told Superior Court Judge Quillian Baldwin, his voice choking. “I know I did something wrong, and I have to pay for it.”

Stevens, represented by LaGrange attorney Ken Gordon, said he fired his gun when Truitt “came in and made contact with me. That’s when I got kind of scared and that’s when the shooting occurred. He put his hands on me, and I got nervous. It was kind of like a tussle.”

Stevens had told Phillips he was going to LaGrange and asked Phillips to come along with a weapon.

“I understood I was to be a form of protection,” Phillips said.

Truitt brought his own protection - Cotton and Lovett - and they met in the parking lot of LaGrange Mall. Truitt, who thought Stevens had money to pay for the jewelry, bought a marking pen at the mall to make sure the bills weren’t counterfeit.

Truitt decided the transaction should take place in a room he had rented at Super 8 motel.

When they got to the motel parking lot, they agreed not to take any weapons into the room and “patted each other down,” Skandalakis said.

Nobody thought to look inside a small black bag that Stevens brought into the room. It contained a 9mm Ruger, which Stevens pulled out and shot Truitt once in the right lower abdomen. Lovett was shot at least six times and Cotton at least three times. Cotton pretended he was dead.

“No one else had a gun in the room except Stevens,” the district attorney said. “He just pulled out the gun and started shooting.”

As they left the motel room, Phillips picked up Truitt’s driver’s license and they drove away in Stevens’ GMC Yukon.

Kevin Johnson, an off-duty sheriff’s deputy who was working security at the adjacent Best Western/Lafayette Garden Inn, heard the gunshots and got the tag number. Coweta County sheriff’s deputies stopped the car on Interstate 85 and found Truitt’s driver’s license, a card key for the motel room, a necklace and two guns. There was blood on the driver’s side of the vehicle.

Atlanta attorney Kenneth Muhammad, who represented Phillips, told the judge his client had “consistently been cooperative with law enforcement and entirely forthcoming.”

“He didn’t know a weapon was going into that hotel room,” he said.

Skandalakis said the state Board of Pardons and Parole will be made aware of Phillips’ cooperation, which included agreeing to testify against Stevens if the case had gone to trial.

Skandalakis said Truitt’s family was in agreement with the plea deal.

“Based on the facts and circumstances, and the fact that we’re dealing with a situation in which our witnesses have criminal records, I thought it was the appropriate plea,” he said.