In the months after her 911 call led a Macon cop to a fatal encounter with a panhandler at a midtown supermarket, Vivian Marable has tried to put the episode out of her mind.

But it hasn’t been easy.

The panhandler, Sammie “Junebug” Davis Jr., who’d startled Marable and asked for money while she was putting groceries in her trunk, was killed.

Police officer Clayton Sutton, who responded to Marable’s Dec. 21 call, shot Davis three times when Davis lunged at him and cut Sutton’s neck with his fingernails.

The shooting has triggered protests and fostered mistrust over city officials’ handling of the case.

“I felt bad about the whole thing,” Marable, 84, said Thursday, “because I felt bad for the family of that man that got killed, and I felt bad for Sutton. ... It just upset me.”

Six days after the incident, Marable told investigators that Davis had “come up behind” her as she walked into the Kroger at 400 Pio Nono Ave.

At about 3:30 p.m., as she loaded her groceries in the parking lot, she turned and noticed Davis standing beside her.

“It was a shock when I raised up and he was right on me,” Marable said Thursday.

She handed Davis a dollar and some change, then hopped in her car and drove away. She dialed 911, she said, to report that someone “had come up and kind of frightened me and that they needed to check him out, because I didn’t know what he was all about.”

Marable, who turns 85 next month, didn’t know Davis was dead until she saw a picture of him on the news.

In her Dec. 27 interview with detectives, she said, “I’m sorry it happened, you know, because I didn’t intend for anything like that to happen.”

Asked Thursday if she in any way felt responsible, Marable said, “Yeah, kind of. I mean, ... I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a situation, but you do feel responsible kind of. But I had to let it go, you know what I mean? ... I knew I had to let it go.”

Marable, who works as a lunchtime hostess at a restaurant, had never called the police about anyone spooking her that way.

She even told a detective that she “wasn’t gonna call” the police anymore. But she says the detective replied, “No, that ain’t the way to feel about it.”

What troubled Marable most of all was “that one family had somebody dead.”

“I didn’t have nothing to do with the actual thing,” she said, “but I just felt guilty for a while, that’s all. I think you would’ve, too.”