A Battle Creek teen will serve 30 to 62 years in prison for murdering 27-year-old Montine Wiley Jr. outside a Kalamazoo distillery in April 2025.
Kaiden Tanner Cole, 19, was sentenced Friday, July 31 by Kalamazoo County Circuit Judge Rebecca D’Angelo, four months after being convicted on March 12 of first-degree murder, carrying a concealed weapon, and felony firearms.
After a two-day trial, the jury arrived at a verdict in less than three hours.
Cole was 18 at the time of the crime, so he did not face a mandatory life term under Michigan law.
Cole was sentenced to 28 to 60 years in prison for first-degree murder, as well as 3 to 5 years for carrying a concealed weapon. The two counts will be served concurrently. Cole was also sentenced to two years in prison on the felony firearm conviction, with a credit for little more than 15 months served, according to court documents. When he first becomes eligible for parole, he will be 48 years old.
Cole murdered a man who was handling security for a private event held by an outside promoter on Saturday, April 12, 2025, at Kalamazoo’s Green Door Distilling Company.
Wiley Jr. was bringing Cole to the parking lot after another security guard denied him entry to the event, when Cole shot him just after 11 p.m. When the incident occurred, officers were already on the scene, responding to a request for crowd control assistance from Green Door staff.
Those cops tried unsuccessfully to revive Wiley Jr. with CPR. Wiley Jr. was subsequently taken to a neighboring hospital and pronounced dead.
Surveillance cameras near the incident caught Cole entering a van with at least four others. Cole, along with two of those people, were arrested within the next week.
The vehicle’s driver, Oscar David Wygant, pled guilty in January to accessory after the fact. His case is no longer public due to the circumstances surrounding the plea, according to Kalamazoo County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Jeff Williams.
Damonte Jenkins-Gooden, the other co-defendant, pled guilty in September to tampering with evidence. He was sentenced to 120 days in jail and 18 months’ probation.
Both co-defendants, like Cole, hail from Battle Creek. Both testified during Cole’s trial.
Tensions rose during the trial as Cole’s friends and family exchanged insults with Wiley Jr.’s friends and family both inside and outside the courthouse.
Wiley Jr., a father of one with a second child on the way, was working alongside his father and uncle when he died. He controlled the security company that was hired that night, as well as his own lawncare business, where he employed at-risk teenagers.
Wiley Jr. had gone down the wrong path as a kid, but at the age of 20, he changed direction and became an important part of Kalamazoo’s Group Violence Intervention program.
“He changed everything and still became the victim,” said Michael Wilder, GVI’s program director.
Taneka Dumas, Wiley Jr.’s mother, has subsequently taken up the torch for her son by forming a local M.O.M.S. (Mothers of Murdered Sons) club. With it, she stated that she intends to “elevate the voice of mothers as advocates for justice, change, and collective healing.”
“Enough is enough with the gun violence,” she remarked. “My son mattered.”
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