Family reacts as man who murdered Inderkum coach is sentenced in Sacramento court
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- Judge sentenced Tahje Michael to 25 years to life for Greg Najee Grimes’ murder.
- Michael pleaded no contest to murder and four counts of assault with firearm.
- Grimes’ 2022 killing marked one of three deadly nightclub shootings that year.
Friends and family remember Greg Najee Grimes as a devoted father, a loving son, a supportive friend and a mentor in Sacramento whose life was ended way too soon by senseless gun violence.
Several of them stood up to speak in a courtroom Friday to Tahje Akhalid Michael, the man convicted of killing Grimes, telling Michael that he did more than take one life three years ago. They told Michael that he left a small boy without his father, parents emotionally devastated without their only son and a family broken by grief.
Deborah Grimes, the slain man’s mother, described seeing her gandson hiding underneath a bed after being told his father was dead. The child overwhelmed with news about the loss of his father asked: what about the Fourth of July fireworks his dad had bought to celebrate that day?
“If you could have seen his face, it would’ve busted your heart,” she told the judge. “The pain is torturous even now.”
Grimes, an Inderkum High School football coach, was gunned down in the early hours of July 4, 2022, in a shooting outside a downtown Sacramento nightclub. His family and friends spoke in court Friday morning before Sacramento Superior Court Judge Shauna Franklin sentenced Michael to 25 years to life in prison for the murder.
Convicted man spoke in court
Michael, 30, spoke in court to apologize to Grimes’ family, telling them he wasn’t offering them any excuses knowing that his actions regardless of the circumstances caused an irrerevisble harm. He said he took full responsibility for Grimes’ death.
“I understand that nothing I say today can undo the pain and grief that the Grimes family has endured and will continue to endure, especially his young son who now has to grow up without his father,” Michael said at the end of the nearly two-hour sentencing hearing. “I carry that reality with me every single day.”
He said the truth of causing lasting pain for Grimes’ family weighs heavily on him. The convicted man explained that at the time he was afraid and not in the right frame of mind to make the best decisions, “but fear doesn’t erase accountability.”
“I wish I had found another way to handle the situation. I wish I had made different choices,” Michael said in court. “And if I could go back and change what happened, I would.”
Featured on ‘America’s Most Wanted’
Michael left the shooting scene that night and was wanted by police for more than a year. He was featured on the TV show “America’s Most Wanted” before authorities captured him in North Carolina and returned him to California to face charges in Grimes’ shooting death.
On June 30, Michael pleaded no contest to a charge of murder for Grimes’ death, along with four counts assault with a semi-automatic firearm for four victims wounded in the shooting outside the the Mix Downtown nightclub.
Michael also pleaded no contest to a charge of unlawful possession of a gun, a violation stemming from a previous misdemeanor conviction of corporal injury to a spouse or cohabitant. Prosecutors alleged in a May 21 amended criminal complaint that Michael was in possession of a .40-caliber handgun and on probation at the time of the deadly downtown shooting.
Grimes, 31, of Sacramento had been a football star at Inderkum High School in the Natomas Unified School District and later at Boise State University. He returned to coach at his high school after college. Grimes also worked with special education children and began a staffing firm seven months before the shooting. He was in the process of purchasing a home when he was killed.
The July 2022 shooting occurred at 16th and L streets. Grimes had just left the Mix Downtown nightclub, and he was waiting for a street light to change when he was shot, his mother Deborah Grimes has said.
Nicole Lewis, Grimes’ aunt, said she still hasn’t heard from Michael why he shot and “cowardly murdered” her nephew that night.
“Was it because he was everything you will never be? I don’t know you, but I am confident that you have not done anything positive,” she told Michael.
‘Malicious murder’
Skyler Lewis Jackson, Grimes’ friend who considered him a brother, called his death a “malicious murder.” She called Michael “a small excuse of a man” who responded impulsively and emotionally in a “vain, ego-driven, jealous tantrum” when he reacted with gun violence that night.
Sacramento police homicide detectives had identified Michael as a suspect in the fatal shooting, but he managed to evade authorities for about 19 months. In January 2024, after he was featured as a wanted fugitive on “America’s Most Wanted,” authorities arrested Michael in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Terrance Leonard was a coach for the freshman football team at Inderkum High when he met Grimes, who was a student in his final year at the school. He said Grimes, as an adult, became the “connective tissue” in the community, bringing people together as “an anchor for Natomas.”
Leonard said he has lost three former players to murder in the past three years, and he wants to do whatever he can to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“He was torn from us,” Leonard said about Grimes. “We can talk to each other. We can talk to a mentor, like myself, and we can make it through. This does not have to include murder or violence.”
Three downtown Sacramento fatal shootings
Grimes already had survived a previous shooting at a downtown nightclub in 2017, when gunman Adrian Calderon shot Grimes in the neck and wounded a security guard at the now-closed Parlare Euro Lounge. Calderon was convicted and sentenced in 2019 to 35 years and four months in prison, according to Sacramento Bee archives.
The shooting that killed Grimes in 2022 was one of three fatal late-night shootings outside Sacramento nightclubs and bars that year.
On April 3, 2022, alleged gang rivals confronted each other in a brazen shootout near 10th and K streets, where six people were killed and 12 were wounded. The shooting happened about 2 a.m. as many people were leaving the nearby nightclubs and bars.
Alfonso Martinez Jr., 34, of Elk Grove was killed in a Sept. 25, 2022, shootout outside Barwest, a midtown sports bar on J Street near 28th Street. The shooting occurred about 12:45 a.m. shortly after a disturbance inside Barwest led to staff ejecting a group of people from the sports bar.
This story was originally published August 8, 2025 at 3:10 PM.
